
Class f E\51*V 
Book Llls 



, ^9 __ 



ZlG? 



WORDS 

AND THEIR PECULIARITIES. 



In 1 vol. post 8vo. pp. 1,182, price 7s. 6d. 
NEW PRACTICAL 

GERMAN-ENGLISH DICTIONARY. 

German and English— English and German. 

BY THE 

Rev. W. L. BLACKLEY, M.A. 

AND 

C. M. FRIEDLANDEK, M.D. Ph.D. 



* Within a volume of moderate 
size the joint-Authors have con- 
structed a dictionary which is cer- 
tain to come into favour with young 
students; for they will find in it a 
measure of help not to be had else- 
where except in works of much 
higher price and larger pretensions. 
The plan adopted for distinguishing 
the various applications of the same 
word is very clear and satisfactory ; 
the care bestowed upon the render- 
ing of the idiomatic proverbial 
phrases is above all praise.' 

Papers for the Schoolmaster. 

' This dictionary is pre-eminently 
practical in the best sense of the 
word. Omitting nothing that is 
likely to be wanted in the course of 
ordinary study, it is yet of such mo- 
derate dimensions as to be conve- 
nient for general use. It is based 
upon the best and latest authorities, 
and having been compiled by editors 
of the two nations, is not marred by 
that inequality of execution which 
is almost inevitable in such a work 



from a single hand. Wehavefound 
in it meanings absent from larger 
dictionaries. This applies particu- 
larly to technical meanings, which 
not unfrequently occur, and are 
here amply supplied. The arrange- 
ment of the materials is also well 
suited for practical use, being sim- 
ple and consistent throughout. 
Idiomaticand proverbial sayings are 
rendered with great aptness and 
correctness. The English-German 
part is remarkably good. To prevent 
the possibility of such absurd blun- 
ders as are often perpetrated by 
English students in writing German, 
the various senses of the English 
word are given, with the appropri- 
ate rendering of each, whereas most 
dictionaries merely give all the 
German meanings in succession, 
without specifying the particular 
cases to which they severally ap- 
ply. No one can have the least diffi- 
culty in selecting from this dic- 
tionary the proper German equiva- 
lent for any English word in any 
connection.' Athen^um. 



London : LONGMANS and CO. 



WORD GOSSIP 



A SEKIES OF FAMILIAR ESSAYS 



WOEDS AND THEIE PECULIAKITIES. 



by mA 
REV. W. L. BLACKLEY, M.A. 

RECTOR OF NORTH WALTHAM, HANTS. 









^>> ^- — — - "^ ^1 



ip 



LONDON : 
LONOMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

1869. 






LONDON: PRINTED BY 

SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STEEET SQI7ABS 

AND TAfvLIAMENT STREET 



PREFACE. 



The kind eeception accorded to the matter of the 
following pages on its appearance this year in suc- 
cessive numbers of the e Churchman's Shilling Mag- 
azine/ has induced me to republish it in a collected 
form. My little book pretends to no higher charac- 
ter than its title implies — Gossip ; if it succeed in 
conveying to my indulgent readers a little of the 
pleasure that ordinary gossip seems to do, I shall 
feel more than satisfied with the result of my labours. 

W. Lewert Blackley. 
North Waltham Kectoey: Dec. 1868. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Introduction 1 



CHAPTER II. 
On Word Hunting in General . . . . 5 

CHAPTER III, 
Common Errors as to Derivation . . . .15 

CHAPTER IV. 
On English Words Faultily formed . . .35 

CHAPTER V. 

Words of Changed or Limited Meaning. . . 48 

CHAPTER VI. 

On rarely noted Primitive Meanings of English 

Words 64 



viii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VII. 

PAGB 

On Slipshod English caused by Faulty Style . 90 

CHAPTER VIII. 

On Slipshod English caused by Confusion of Meta- 
phor 110 

CHAPTER IX. 
On Peculiarities of Words kindred in Meaning . 117 

CHAPTER X. 
On some curious Analogies of Derivation . .138 

CHAPTER XI. 
Dialectic Expressions 147 

CHAPTER XII. 
On Words newly made or newly applied . . 171 

CHAPTER XIII. 
On New Words made, orjected to, or wanted . 175 

CHAPTER XIV. 
On some Disputed Derivations . . . .191 

CHAPTER XV. 

Derivations (continued) . . . . . .210 

INDEX 227 



WORD GOSSIP. 



CHAPTER I. 

1NTE0DUCT0ET. 

The plan and purpose of the following pages will 
be best understood by the ordinary meaning of the 
title I have prefixed. They are meant to form no 
special systematic treatise on words and their 
peculiarities, but merely, if possible, to set forth 
here and there, in a form pretending to no depth 
of learning and to no authority of teaching, some 
points of interest connected with language in gene- 
ral, and our own language in particular, which it 
is hoped may prove attractive to ordinary readers. 
I have endeavoured to avoid, on the one hand, too 
dry and deep, on the other, too superficial and con- 
jectural, a method of treatment, and have prefixed 
the title of ' Gossip ' in the hope that the very 
notion of homeliness and sociability which is at- 
tached to the word may meet the objections which 

B 



2 WORD GOSSIP. 

some t stern critics ' might feel disposed to take to 
a set of essays on words, filled with digressions and 
familiarities of various sorts, which at first sight 
may seem not closely enough connected with the 
subject in hand. 

Gossip would be no gossip if it were all didactic 
and dry — unprofitable gossip if altogether light and 
trifling. My aim has been, and will be, so far as * 
possible, to say what I have to say of things which 
may be instructive in such a way as may also be 
interesting ; and to ' bandy words ' with my kindly 
readers as I might do some rainy day beside my 
study fire with a congenial friend. Of course I shall 
find many to disagree with my statements, and to 
question my deductions. Why should they not ? 
Who shall limit any mans exercise of the great 
and glorious 'right to differ'? Would life really 
be worth having if there were no contradictions ? 
And who need write books if all men were of one 
mind ? But I will at least promise my readers that 
they shall neither find me dictatorial in my state- 
ments, nor so bigoted to my own opinions as to 
hold myself above correction. If I offer them the 
rough quartz of my own digging, I shall rejoice 
if they extract the gold, even though they crush 
the ore to do so. 

It has often been my lot, in preaching to a 
rustic congregation, to be told by my hearers, by 



INTRODUCTORY. 3 

unmistakeable outward signs which every preacher 
ought to be quick to recognise, that I have been 
running too long in one groove. On such occasions 
I generally use at the end of my period the caba- 
listic formula, * Now, I am going to tell you a story.' 
It is like the adjutant's cry of ' 'ttention ! ' to the 
regiment standing at ease ; it is the unfailing ' Open 
sesame ' to blinking eyes ; it acts as the sound of 
Blucher's guns at Waterloo, and gives the victory 
at once to virtue and wakefulness in those strug- 
gling hearers whose whole reserve of vital power 
has been engaged by nature in the huge effort of 
digesting their one weekly dinner worthy of the 
name. Of course my sermon story must have a 
meaning. Even so I will tell a little story now to 
my readers, with whom I wish to start on good 
terms, but who may be already inclined to yawn 
over my egotistical introduction. 

My father had a schoolfellow, whose name, for 
all I know, may have been just as well Gonzalvo 
Guicciardini as Bob Brown, which latter, how- 
ever, I will call him by ' for short.' This was a lad 
of such appalling conscientiousness that nothing 
could induce him to make an unqualified statement 
of fact, lest in some unintentional way he might be 
found to have uttered a falsehood. Some compan- 
ions one day, in order to get an absolute assertion 
out of him, made the following experiment. They 
b2 



4 WOBD GOSSIP. 

offered him a wine glass, saying, c Now, Bob Brown, 
take this wine glass in your hand, and say, " Upon 
my word of honour, I have this wine glass in my 
hand.'" With imperturbable solemnity Bob took 
the glass, and slowly said, ' Upon my word of 
honour, I have this wine glass in my hand, I think ! ' 
Just as Bob with his wine glass am I with my 
words. He had a strong belief in the correctness 
of his view, but left a loop-hole for escape in case 
of possible error. So do I with my derivations ; 
I thinlc they are right, but I will not for a moment 
say it is impossible they, or some of them, may be 
wrong, 



CHAPTER II. 

ON WORD-HUNTING IN GENERAL. 

That the wise man acquires with each access of 
learning an increase, at least, of one special sort of 
knowledge, that, namely, of his own ignorance, is 
a remark which the student of language must find 
continually justified as his experience grows. The 
marvellous advances which linguistic studies have 
made of late years, and the wide field which has 
been opened to the labours of the conscientious 
enquirer, have awakened enough interest in such 
matters to render some slight acquaintance with 
the general subject of linguistics almost a requisite 
in circles of average education. Who, for instance, 
now-a-days spends a week in a country house, with- 
out finding at least one or two occasions when the 
general appalling dulness of ordinary conversation 
becomes enlivened by some controversy as to the 
force of a word, the meaning of a custom, or the 
origin of a phrase or proverb ? And who has not 
noted the interest with which such subjects are 



6 WOBD GOSSIP. 

pursued, even when not one of the parties to the 
controversy is qualified by study or experience to 
do more than hazard a conjecture or guess at an 
interpretation ? We do not mean to say that every 
one to be met on such occasions is either suffi- 
ciently capable, willing, or rash to enter personally 
into the discussion ; but they generally can and do 
attend to its course and scope with a certain sort 
of uninstructed pleasure, like that with which the 
uninitiated look upon the huntsman's casting of 
his hounds, or watch the intricacies of backing-up 
at cricket, or count the numbers as they are 
scored upon the billiard-marking board. To be 
sure, the occasions for linguistic talk are limited. 
Breakfast time is a bad time for it ; half the people 
have letters to read ; and the unlettered remainder 
are too watchful of their chance for the laid-down 
newspaper, or too attentive to the horrid man who 
will skim it of its cream by ejaculating telegraphic 
headings, to mind even Max Muller if he began 
to lecture, or Professor Whitney if he began to 
criticise him. And if breakfast be a bad time, 
dinner is a worse one ; the sympathizers rarely are 
within reach of each other ; a solemn ceremony is 
going on which must be attended to ; the great 
British sacrifice to high appetite must be gravely 
approached and regularly consummated ; certain 
viands must be accepted and certain others 



WORD-HUNTING. 7 

declined ; . certain wines drunk at one moment, 
and refused the next ; any error in doing which, 
may make your neighbour doubt of your style, 
and in such case scout your disquisitions, were 
they such as professors would praise and pub- 
lishers scramble for. Certain attentions must be 
paid to the lady on your right, or woe betide the 
female estimate of your otherwise brilliant conver- 
sational powers, when your late neighbour talks of 
you up- stairs in the drawing-room, with her hand on 
the mantelpiece and her foot on the fender, the re- 
membrance of boredom in her heart, and the awful 
verdict dropping from her lips, ' Humph ! hadn't 
much to say for himself; rather a dull specimen !' 
The British dinner is too dovetailed an assembly 
for the etymologist to expect attention from. The 
fox-hunters predominate there ; if they choose they 
may unearth the ghost of poor Reynard killed in 
the morning ; they can view him at soup, check for 
champagne, and run in to him triumphantly by 
the time the little bits of cheese are handed round. 
But the poor word-hunter may just as well strangle 
his little bag- fox at once as turn him down for sport. 
There's not even a tally-ho ! he's mobbed in a 
moment. The British dinner is no time for lin- 
guistics. And how about other hours between the 
meals ? Equally vain ! People (male or female) 
hunt in couples then, and only scholars can enjoy 



8 WOBD GOSSIP. 

linguistics tete-a-tete ; so, after all, there is but one 
good season in the day for such a topic ; but, to 
make amends, it nourishes then. At luncheon time, 
that delightful meal, one of whose synonyms — 
4 snack ' — means in Low German simply ' chat,' — 
when other interests flag and appetites are moder- 
ate ; when you can sit a moment without your plate 
being snatched away, and listen a moment without 
a servant's interruption ; when the parson has 
dropped in on one side, perhaps, leavened with 
Greek and Latin, and the ladies have some French, 
and the younger ones some German, and the young 
men believe it the thing to nod as if they had read 
or heard Lectures on the Science of Language, and 
their sisters without any nodding have really read 
and liked such books as ' Trench upon Words,' — 
then I say, at this blissful free-and-easy luncheon 
time let the astute word-hunter slip his fox. Away 
he goes, and all the field, to carry on the figure, are 
off in the pursuit ; some shouting loudly when they 
should be silent, some shyly silent when they 
might vociferate, some with firm- seated attention 
resolved to see it out, but all going and meaning 
going. And if the fox be game, if the word be one 
really interesting, how wide and sweeping is the 
chase. The hunters vying, each select the trophy 
they desire as the reward of their pursuit. Prefix 
and suffix form poor Reynard's pate and brush ! 






WORD-HUNTING. 9 

nay, so accurately does the parallel hold good, that 
the huntsman may suggest to the first whip, as 
the merry chase goes on, that vermin and verbum 
must at least be cognate terms. They hunt him 
to his last lodging ; earth after earth he tries, but 
finds no harbour ; from county to county, from land 
to land, from continent to continent, they follow 
their failing quarry. The labourers in the fields 
they pass make signs and shout to guide the hot 
pursuit ; Kelt, Norseman, Briton, Saxon, Gaul, 
Lett, Finn, and Provencal, stand on each rising 
ground to telegraph his track, till, worn by long 
fati 6 ue to a mere limping shadow of his former 
self, he goes to ground, at home at last, amidst the 
hills of Hindostan. 

In truth, the philologist's hobby-horse is a strong 
goer that trifles never balk. To him the British 
Channel is a surface drain, the Alps and Apennines 
mere posts and rails, the Mediterranean a simple 
brook, and the Himalayas only an outlying cover. 
And surely in racketing over such a wide expanse 
through all the season, which means all his life, that 
hobby's rider must have many a happy day and 
see a deal of country. Seriously, to drop this very 
horsy metaphor, the student of words enters upon 
a pursuit the pleasures of which no merely worldly 
study can outrival, and stores with every day he 
lives, with almost every sentence he hears, resources 



/ 

/ 



10 WORD GOSSIP. 

for continual enjoyment. And if in the remarks 
which follow I seem to bear too hardly on the 
rashly expressed results of merely superficial 
observation, or hasty conjecture, I would have it 
borne in mind that it is not the fact of observation 
however superficial, or of conjecture however 
hasty, that I condemn, but only their rash and un- 
profitable expression. For the conjectural stage of 
linguistic enquiry must be passed through by every 
student. He can never learn to swim without ven- 
turing into the water ; and floundering along with 
one foot on the ground, though it be not exactly 
swimming, may teach him at least to strike out 
with his arms. And it is in fact only the obser- 
vation of derivations which he either sees as being- 
obvious or guesses at as being probable, which 
gives him any taste for the pursuit. Let me in 
all humility quote my own experience to illustrate 
my meaning. As a very little boy, walking with 
my father, the fact of a woman curtseying to him 
as she passed, set me on enquiring the derivation 
of the word curtsey. Knowing no better, I made 
myself an adverb curte, shortly, from the Latin 
adjective curtus, referring the sey to Latin seder e, to 
sit ; and was very satisfied with my conjecture, 
as explaining the gesture to be an abridgment of 
sitting, till my father upset it at once by pointing 
out the fact of the word curtsey being compressed 



WORD-HUNTING. 11 

from courtesy, and consequently referable to the 
root of court. The very consideration of the two 
derivations proved of interest, and tended to en- 
courage the taste for such investigations. In fact, 
to the nninstructed beginner, conjecture alone can 
awake an interest in the matter, and point the 
way to study as the means of reaching fuller and 
more accurate results. It is exactly so with other 
pursuits, such for example as those of music and the 
fine arts, and it might be so with the acquirement 
of Greek and Latin, did not blind custom make 
our teachers universally begin at the wrong end, 
cramming young brains with undeveloped gram- 
matical results before they can comprehend gram- 
matical relations. There is no question, that a 
child hearing a sonata of Beethoven played, and 
followed by ' Pop goes the Weasel,' will prefer the 
latter performance, which seems an abomination 
to the more instructed ear ; in the same way that, 
further on in life, as the ear becomes educated, 
the true lover of music infallibly transfers his ad- 
miration from Italian melody to German harmony ; 
but without passing through such phases the ma- 
terials for comparison between the lowest and the 
highest degrees of musical excellence would be 
wanting. 

So it is in art. The child who draws what he 
really thinks a portrait of his dear papa, represent- 



12 WOBD GOSSIP. 

ing hiin as an agonizing fignre of 8 supported on 
lucifer matches, and brandishing two frantic toast- 
ing-forks for arms, mast pass through some such 
phase as this before he can become conscious of 
any taste or liking for drawing. The errors are 
only seen by degrees, and the correction of each, 
as discovered, marks a new step gained in the way 
to excellence ; and this brings me back to the text 
with which I started, only placed in another form. 
The wise man learns his own ignorance, and know- 
ledge of his ignorance increases his wisdom. It 
may be that some of my readers know the town 
of Dusseldorf, that metropolis of painting, and 
Schulte's ' Permanent e Ausstellung,' or exhibition 
of paintings, in which nearly all the pictures which 
leave the easels of the three hundred and odd artists 
in the place appear for at least two or three days 
before being sent to other exhibitions, or to the 
patrons by whom they have been commissioned. 
Such readers may remember the name and works 
of Wessel. ' Hujus magnum nomen fuit ' about 
the year of grace 1860 ; not as a great painter, for 
mortal man probably never saw anything so ridicu- 
lous as the so-called paintings he exhibited ; they 
formed topics of endless amusement when they 
appeared, and attracted many spectators by the 
fame of their badness who would have felt but 
little pleasure in, or appreciation of, the noblest 



WOBD-HUNTING. 13 

works of Aehenbach or Lessing. Tlie man knew 
nought of painting, nought of drawing, but lie 
insisted on his crude ideas, monstrously absurd as 
they were, being exhibited ; and the result was, as 
might have been predicted, that he was looked upon 
as an utter lunatic. He could see no fault in his 
productions ; he had been, if I mistake not, a 
waiter in an hotel before the frenzy filled his mind 
that he was born to be an artist, and the fear- 
ful daubs he put before the public were the result 
of total want of education. His eye had not 
learnt to see or to compare objects, and to observe 
the differences, wide though they were, between 
the models he copied and his own imitations. 
ISTow, would it have been right to blame this poor 
crazed man for painting ? would it have been right 
or reasonable to take his easel and his pencils from 
his hands, and thus destroy his pleasure, and 
disturb his peace ? Assuredly not ; such an idea 
could scarcely enter any reasonable brain ; but it 
certainly would have been well to prevent the 
exposure of his astounding ignorance, and to have 
sanctioned the appearance of no more of his 
productions before a critical public till he could see 
things at least with an eye able to protect him 
from attempting impossibilities. It is just thus 
that the work of superficial observers in linguistics 
should be treated. They should not be told, as now 



14 WOBD GOSSIP. 

and then an impatient student may tell them, that 
the j have nought to do with words ; their interest 
in, and awakening taste for, a delightful study, is 
not to be discouraged and ridiculed, but they 
should be counselled to dig below the surface. 
Their observation is not to be blamed, but its 
superficiality is. The work of the cleverest en- 
gineer in opening a coal mine must begin at the 
surface, must be superficial, somewhere or other ; 
but if he wants to make his toil profitable, he must 
go thence deeper and deeper. So he strikes new 
strata, and taps new veins, while others may be 
content with gathering the useless slag and clinker 
which has been burnt at the pit's mouth. So it is 
with the investigation of words. It is the rarest 
thing to find any novelty whatever even in the 
most accurate guesses of the superficial linguist ; 
and they are often as annoying to the real student 
as the novel announcement might be to a real his- 
torian that ' Queen Anne was dead.' 



15 



CHAPTER III. 

COMMON ERRORS AS TO DERIVATION. 

The word guess, in my last paragraph, suggests 
for consideration the grand erroneous notion of 
derivation which is most generally entertained. 
It is this, that similarity in sound, similarity in 
sense, or similarity in application, discovered as 
existing between two words, either in the same or 
different languages, is sufficient to establish the 
fact of one of the words in question being either 
cognate or affiliated to the other. 

And this brings me to notice, in passing, another 
common error as to derivation ; I mean that of 
carelessness in distinguishing kinship of words from 
descent. How often people presume, just because 
Homer wrote before the birth of Latin literature, 
that the Latin language is a daughter of the 
Greek, and that similar or identical words occurring 
in both languages must of necessity be of Greek 
descent ; without remembering that even in the 



16 WORD GOSSIP. 

days of Homer men lived in Italy, who must Lave 
had a language. Much in the same way we find 
it said of such and such an English word, — ' Oh ! 
it comes from the German,' as if that were its con- 
clusive pedigree. The distinction between affinity 
and derivation is so little attended to, that many, in 
speaking of languages and words, make the same 
error as one might who, speaking of a family of 
sisters differing in age, considered the eldest 
mother of the second, the second of the third, and 
-so on to the end. In fact, the fraternal relation- 
ship of language is loosely spoken of as the filial, 
and men imagine continually that they have dis- 
covered an origin where in fact they have only 
lighted upon an analogy. 

But this distinction between cognate and derived 
words is only by the way. The grand error in 
common notions of derivation, as I have said, lies 
in regarding a resemblance, which may be casual, 
between two words, as a necessary proof of common 
origin. 

That such resemblance is a presumption of their 
common origin is unquestionably true ; and in 
many, nay, in innumerable cases, the presumption 
may be strong enough to amount to a demonstra- 
tion ; but this is far from sufficient to establish 
anything like a rule referable to all cases ; and 
the neglect of this distinction leads to much con- 
fusion. 



COMMON EBBOBS AS 10 DERIVATION. 17 

I need make no excuse for transcribing here 
some apposite remarks on this subject from the 
pen of Professor Max Miiller, for the matter of 
whose labours in the linguistic field students of 
language can hardly be more indebted than 
ordinary readers are for their manner: — ' It does 
happen now and then that in languages, whether 
related to each other or not, certain words appear 
of identically the same sound, and with some 
similarity of meaning. These words, which former 
etymologists seized upon as most confirmatory of 
their views, are now looked upon with well-founded 
mistrust. Attempts for instance are frequently 
made at comparing Hebrew words with the words 
of Semitic languages. If this is done with a pro- 
per regard to the immense distance which separates 
the Semitic from the Aryan languages, it deserves 
the highest credit. But if, instead of being 
satisfied with pointing out faint coincidences in 
the lowest and most general elements of speech, 
scholars imagine they can discover isolated cases 
of minute coincidence amidst the general disparity 
in the grammar and dictionary of the Aryan and 
Semitic families of speech, their attempts become 
unscientific and reprehensible.'^ 

* Max Miiller, Lectures on Science of Language, Series II.. 
p. 282. 



18 WORD GOSSIP. 

And again in the same lecture,^ — ' Sound ety- 
mology has nothing to do with sound. We know 
words to be of the same origin which have not 
a single letter in common, and which differ in 
meaning as much as black and white.' (By the 
way, this phrase, accidentally used, is a good illus- 
tration of the statement, the word black, if its 
common derivation be received, coming from a 
word signifying pale.) ' Mere guesses, hoivever 
plausible, are completely discarded from the province 
of scientific etymology. ... A derivation, even 
though it be true, is of no real value if it cannot 
be proved — a case which happens not unfrequently.' 
Let me give an instance or two of this conjec- 
tural etymology. A very distinguished scholar and 
author thus derives the word vouchsafe. He makes 
it part of a French phrase, ' Yeux, sauf ton hon- 
neur, me permettre,' &c. ' Deign, saving your 
honour, to permit me,' &c. ; thus implying where- 
ever the word is used the astonishing ellipsis 
of the words ' your honour,' or some such 
equivalent ; and implying further, that the ful- 
filment of such a request as is here presumed 
must in any case be supposed capable of com- 
promising the honour of the person entreated. 
This already is a hard strain on our belief, and 
looking further into it, and seeing that such a 
*Lect.VI. p. 2^3. 



COMMON ERRORS AS TO DERIVATION. 19 

derivation would bring the word from the Latin 
velle, instead of from vovere, altering entirely the 
sense of the word, we feel no difficulty in con- 
demning the conjecture as faulty and frivolous. 
The word is in fact, as the dictionaries rightly have 
it, referable to vow or vouch, either in the form 
of an active verb with an ellipsis of the object, vow 
(me, him, &c.) safe, that is, give a warrant or safe 
conduct (in the same way as we ask to he borne 
harmless), or as a neuter verb, vow safe, that is, 
warrant surely, which is the first and natural sense 
of the expression. How it has reached its second- 
ary meaning, condescend, is a matter with which 
we are not here concerned. 

I have purposely adduced this instance of faulty 
conjecture overlooking obvious derivation, as af- 
fording a sort of extreme example of the errors 
into which guesses, unsupported by proof, may 
lead generally well-informed students. 

Let me take a different case. I mean the word 
tally-ho ! For this a writer in ' Notes and Queries ' 
suggests the French derivation, an taillis, — literally 
to the copse. The very use of the word might have 
shown the absurdity of such a suggestion. It is 
only when the fox has ' gone away ' from cover 
(or taillis) that even a Cockney would dream of 
raising his tally-ho at all. Woe betide his hunting 
character for ever if guilty of such an atrocious 
c2 



20 WOBD GOSSIP. 

crime ; and, therefore, to suppose that when Rey- 
nard is gone the sportsman should be summoned 
into cover, can only be a rational guess on the 
supposition that fox-hunting and donkey-racing 
are conducted on similar principles. This is a fine 
example of the need of proof to establish conjecture. 
The author of this explanation should at least have 
examined the French terms of chase before airing 
his suggestion. I happen to possess an old French 
book ■ Le parfait chasseur,' # in which, strangely 
enough, the origin of the cry is found not under 
the head of fox-hunting, but as belonging to the 
pursuit of the stag ! I quote the following passage 
from page 8 : — ' Quand le Veneur a recu l'ordre de 
f rapper aux brisees, il prend son limier et marche 
devant toute la troupe droit a sa brisee, et pousse 
ses voies jusqu'au lancer ; puis il sonne deux ou 
trois coups de trompe quand il a lance son cerf. 
Si quelqu'un le voit, il crie ta-Mau, et Ton donne 
les chiens.' 

Here we have the exact word in sense and sound ; 
whatever its origin, and however singular the fact 
that we spell it with the double Z, which the 
French pronounce exactly as in the words ta-Mau, 
it is manifest that the derivation an taillis was 
never imagined for it in the very country whence 

* Par M. de Selincourt, Paris, 1683. 



COMMON ERRORS AS TO DERIVATION. 21 

the correspondent of Notes and Queries would 
deduce it, though, the term exists there as an 
established hunting- cry, with the very meaning in 
which it echoes all over England for seven months 
in the year. 

Again, how plausible is the conjecture that the 
word join is derivable from jpinus, a pine tree, 
rather than from spina, a thorn. In the first place, 
the form both of the word and the thing it ex- 
presses is far more similar to that of the former 
than that of the latter word ; and in the second, 
we find a striking analogy in an independent lan- 
guage. In German the word pin is expressed by 
a particularisation of the general term nadel, a 
needle ; the form being steck-nadel, a needle which 
remains in its place, as contradistinguished from 
one which is removed as soon as its object of 
carrying a thread through the orifice it makes is 
accomplished, (the prefix stech, if meaning merely 
perforation, while suggesting no distinction, since 
a needle perforates as well as a pin, would more 
properly be stech). Now the Germans actually 
apply the word nadel to what we call the needles 
of trees of the pine tribe, as distinguished from the 
leaves of other trees ; and they further classify 
pine timber in general as nadel-hoh, needle- wood . 
Yet a little examination shows how, in spite of 
these analogies of form and of application, the 



22 WOBD GOSSIP. 

word pin must come through the less similar spina, 
from the still less similar spica, which supplies us 
also with our word spike in another sense. In 
Virgil's description of the squalid Achemenides in 
the third hook of the iEneid, we read that his 
tattered covering (like that, if I mistake not, of 
Robinson Crusoe, friend of our youth) was held 
together by thorns, ' consertum tegumen spinis. 9 
And there is no reason why the word pine might 
not have been used instead, were such a sense 
customary, since both Virgil's metre would have 
admitted it, and Achemenides' circumstances 
would have been in keeping with such use, for we 
are actually told he was in a pine-bearing country 
in the description of the pursuing Cyclops, who 
used a pine stem as his walking stick. 

' Trunca maimm pinus regit, et vestigia firmat' 

Ovid,* moreover, referring to Virgil's account of 
Achemenides, speaks of him when his squalor is 
past, and when in the matter of raiment he is what 
an Irishman would call ' smooth ' once more — 

' Talia quserenti jam non hirsutus amictu, 
Jam sims, et spiuis conserto tegmine nullis, 
Fatur Achemenides ' 



* Metam. xiv. 165, 166. 



COMMON ERRORS AS TO DERIVATION. 23 

And Tacitus, 1 * describing the attire of the Germans, 

says,— 

1 Tegumen omnibus sagum, fibula, aut, si desit, spina 
consertum/ 

c The universal covering is a blanket, fastened 
by a brooch, or failing this, by a thorn.' 

These instances, to say nothing of the French 
word ejoingle, which in its earlier form, espingle, 
exhibits the initial s of spina, are entirely con- 
clusive on the point in debate. 

Again, with reference to the derivation of the 
word umjoire conjectural etymology has been very 
busy ; and in this case we find a really conscien- 
tious and laborious student tempted into a guess 
which can hardly be considered satisfactory. I 
mean that given by Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood ; f 
though, as might be expected from so accurate a 
scholar, he adduces evidence, which to himself 
is manifestly conclusive, of the correctness of his 
view. He says, — £ the old spelling nomjpeyr (Piers 
Ploughman's Vision, ii. 107), leaves no room for 
doubt that this word comes from the old French 
nomjpair^% uneven, odd.' This seems, however, 
to admit of much doubt ; while another origin, 

* Tac. Grerm. xiv. 

t Philological Soc. Proceedings, 1846-48, p. 151. 

\ For non pair. 



24 WORD GOSSIP. 

imperium, command, which Webster gives, is a 
truly miserable guess. Were we to accept nonpadr 
as the origin of the word, we should be taking a 
simple adjective as expressing a special personage, 
a course which, however necessary in cases where 
we can do no better, seems very objectionable if 
we can find a substantive existing in the word. 
The initial n, in the instance adduced, is mani- 
festly as exceptional as that in the word nunlrte 
occurring in Shakspeare for uncle, and is occasioned 
most probably by an original agglomeration of the 
n from the article an before the vowel of ompair ; 
much in the same way as we say alligator for a 
lagarto (lizard). That m is sometimes convertible 
to n is indeed unquestionable, but only again under 
urgent necessity, and the expression non-pair 
would be very exceptional in a language which has 
the Latin impar in the form unfair, — the last 
quality to be desired in a referee. It therefore 
appears more probable that the word, which, as I 
ha^re said, implies a person, is formed of the French 
substantive homme, man, and pair, equal, and sig- 
nifies the impartial man, in exactly the same way 
as we find the referee called upon continually in 
German students' duels by the epithet Unpartei- 
ischer. I may add, as strong confirmation of this 
view, that it was suggested to me by observing 
how in cricket matches, in that part of West 



COMMON EBB OB S AS TO DERIVATION. 2.3 

Surrey where I then lived, the umpire (as we pro- 
nounce the name) is invariably styled the umpeer, 
and the fact of our having the word peer, as 
equivalent to the French pair, showed me how 
obviously the former part of umpire was referable 
to the French word liomme. 

The examination of this word tempts me, in 
spite of my own warnings against conjectural and 
unevidenced etymologies, to venture the suggestion 
that our word fair, in the sense of just, and also 
perhaps in the sense of beautiful (apart from hav- 
ing light hair,) comes from the same root, through 
the primary notion of evenness, equality of propor- 
tion, regular features being still considered all but 
indispensable to beauty. 

Another very common error as to derivation 
lies in suggesting the name of some supposed or 
real place or person as the origin of a word. 
This in very many cases is committed by observers 
of the entirely superficial class, by the etymological 
butterfly rather than the etymological bee. So we 
hear such extravagances as assigning gambado to 
the name of an imaginary riding-master, while the 
true meaning is something adapted to the leg,* 
from Italian gamba, the shin (as used in viol cli 
gamba, leg fiddle, violoncello); the source, by the 

* Compare our own words, leg t leggings. 



26 WORD GOSSIP. 

way, of our words ham and gammon (of bacon), 
which latter again I have heard absurdly assigned 
as the etymon of gammon in the sense of hoaxing, 
as one speaks of a rich joke, or as schoolboys talk 
of &fat piece of fan ; the simple meaning of making 
game, from the Saxon gam en (as in bach-gammon, 
game of the trough), being entirely overlooked. 

So Notes and Queries records a brilliant guess 
originated by lighting on the mention of a cook 
named Brawn in Dr. King's writings. This, un- 
supported by any sort of evidence, rational or 
contextual, is sufficient to persuade a conjecturer 
that this Soyer of the time conferred his ' magnum 
et venerabile nomen ' on that excellent viand with 
which witless Wamba routed poor Isaac of York 
at the tournament. But brawn means distinct- 
ively the meat of a boar (boaren), and, properly 
speaking, is applied to the thick portion of the 
boar cut from the shoulders and neck. Wamba' s 
' shield of brawn ' accurately describes its shape, 
as also the modern expression collar of braivn 
fixes its anatomical position, though a misappre- 
hension or wrong conjecture as to the force of the 
word collar has led to the cook's idea of serving 
brawn with a frilled collar round it ; while this 
mistake again has led the carvers of brawn to 
another notion, and, the collar being supposed 
worn to enable the carver to grasp the brawn with 



COMMON ERRORS AS TO DERIVATION. 27 

his hand, it has been held necessary to do so, and 
subversive of all order to touch the sacred circle 
with a fork. 

Take again the word till for a money- drawer. 
Mr. Timbs, the author of ' Club Life of London,' 
in describing the end of the once celebrated ' Tom's 
coffee-house,' says : — ' The coffee-house business 
closed in 1814, about which time the premises 
were first occupied by Mr. William Till, the 
famous numismatist.' Here, it may be supposed, 
is an admirable derivation for the word till from a 
personal name. But a little examination of word- 
history disproves the accuracy of this inviting con- 
jecture. Mr. William Till, as a coin collector, was 
appropriately named ; but he collected in 1814, 
while the word i till, a drawer in a counter or 
desk,' is to be found in Bailey's Dictionary of 1742, 
and probably in far earlier ones, since it is derived 
from an Anglo-Saxon word clille (equivalent to 
German theil, a part), and meaning a division or 
compartment. 

k The same historical argument demolishes the 
absurd derivation of brawn from a cook so named. 
Dr. King wrote his ' Art of Cookery ' in the early 
part of the last century ; but the word brawn is 
centuries older, and to be found in the prayer-book 
version of the 119th Psalm, ver. 70 : — ' Their heart 
is as fat as brawn, but my delight hath been in thy 



28 WORD GOSSIP. 

law.' The prayer-book version, as most are aware, 
dates from 1539, being that of the great English 
Bible of Tyndal and Coverclale ; and it is interest- 
ing to see how the later translation of the autho- 
rised version has dropped out the old word, giving 
instead, ' Their heart is as fat as grease.' 1 

Another illustration of the error of deducing 
words from individual or imagined names appears 
in the explanation commonly given of the word 
martinet. It signifies in English a vexatiously strict 
commanding officer, and is altogether a military 
term. It is therefore alleged to be the name of 
some departed colonel named Martinet, who has 
thus for ever stamped the name he bore upon the 
character he gained. But martinet in the Swiss 
superstition means the spirit of mischief, the 
malicious sprite, the bugbear, and in this sense is 
mentioned by Victor Hugo (' Toilers of the Sea,' 
vol. i.) when setting forth how every country has 
at least its tradition of some such ill-conditioned 
Loki. And a special reason why such a Swiss 
word should have this extensive military sense to^ 
day may be found in the fact that for so many 
centuries and in so many countries Swiss merce- 
naries formed a part of almost every European 
army. 

It is undoubtedly true that individual names 
have now and then been perpetuated in the 



COMMON EBB OB S AS TO DEBIVATION. 29 

manner here censured ; but if so, we find almost 
universally that there is some good and distinct 
historic proof of the fact ; and if such proof be 
not adducible, we can scarcely go wrong in scout- 
ing the derivation proposed. When we are told 
that the word simony, by which we mean corrupt 
trafficking in church preferment, is derived from 
Simo» Magus, the explanation and testimony 
afforded by his history recorded in the Acts of the 
Apostles give convincing proof of the accuracy of 
the derivation. So we know the origin of Daven- 
port, D'Oyley, Macadamize, Brougham, and 
Clarence. So we know that to ' burke an enquiry' 
means to silence it, in figurative allusion to the 
murderer Burke, who, to provide bodies for the 
surgeons, used to murder his victims by covering 
their mouths with a pitch plaster. But other such 
instances are rare. In fact, these nominal deriva- 
tions hardly ever have any sort of reasonable 
ground for their support. One such term, how- 
ever, seems now to have got a firm footing in our 
language, the explanation of which may possibly in 
course of time be lost. It is that most euphonious 
periphrasis in which the bloodthirsty ogre of the 
lodging-house bed is denominated a 'Norfolk 
Howard.' Here a very noble name is assigned to 
a very ignoble insect, with what seems likely to be 
a permanent, if unpleasant, association, and the 



30 WOBB GOSSIP. 

manner in which it has come about may be worth 
recording. 

A few years ago a Welsh gentleman altered his 
name ; the lieutenant of his county, denying his 
right to do so, refused to address him by his new 
style in official correspondence. Considerable 
debate arose on the subject, and, the question 
being brought before a court of law, it wa* held 
that there was nothing illegal in the change of 
name effected. The decision was given the day 
before the Derby day. The Times on the day after 
the Derby day inserted a leading article on the 
subject of the right of changing names ; the writer 
of that article went to the Derby, and, doubtless 
knowing what the subject of his night's writing 
was to be, had it frequently present in his mind. 
In Epsom he noticed an innkeeper's name posted 
up as Joshua Bugg — truly an ominous epithet for 
one of his calling, — and the Times' writer in his 
article cited this extraordimary patronymic as an 
example both of a name needing change, and of its 
owner's right to change it. The article declared 
that as far as legality was concerned ' Mr. Joshua 
Bugg might take the name of Norfolk Howard to- 
morrow.' Mr. Joshua Bugg was a reader of the 
Times, and he ' followed the leader ' implicitly. 
Not only did he announce in the next day's Times 
his change of name, but actually adopted the 



COMMON EBRORS AS TO DERIVATION. 31 

writer's chance suggestion, and took the style of 
' Norfolk Howard ' from that time. Happy man, 
one might say, at the price of a short advertisement 
io end the long annoyance of so loathly a name. 
But mark again the sort of Nemesis which followed. 
He hoped, as millions have vainly done, to get rid 
of the bug ; but the very publicity of the proceed- 
ing marred the purpose of its author. The multi- 
tudinous tribe of bugs whose ranks he left took 
umbrage at his leaving; the right he exercised 
they exercised in turn ; true to their affectionate 
nature, they would not part from him whom once 
they held. When he was Bugg, they all were 
bugs, — plain, simple, peaceful, pertinacious, and 
content ; but he became Norfolk Howard — so did 
they. Had poor Joshua taken the name of Ciinex, 
he would have been still a Bugg, though a bug in 
Latin, and the tribe, familiar already with that 
epithet, would have been content with being bugs 
in English. But the temptation to adopt aristo- 
cratic style was too much for him, and so he and 
his descendants must bear for ever to represent 
that multitudinous nightmare which mocks them 
still beneath their high-flown name. 

This explanation of words by the suggestion of 
a personal name, however trustworthy where dis- 
tinct evidence can be adduced, as in the last two 
instances, is, as I have before said, inadmissible 



32 WOBB GOSSIP. 

without proof; to attempt it is an error, caused by 
want of research. I will now adduce an illustration 
or two of an error of an opposite character, — that, 
namely, arising from such over-research as leads 
enquirers to prefer seeking a remote derivation for 
a word to looking for it close at home. The word 
skewer, for example, with its vulgar pronunciation 
skiver, may give occasion to very learned disquisi- 
tion. The linguist's first idea, under the light of 
the expression skiver, will be to refer the word (as 
the dictionaries do) to the same root as the words 
shiver, a fragment or flake, and shavings, of wood. 
These words are to be found in the Dutch schyf, a 
slice, high German schiefer and Danish skive, a 
slate ; and though it be evident that the butcher's 
skewer, a strong and penetrating stick, is not well 
suggested by the idea of a weak shaving or a flaky 
mineral, one is apt enough to sit down content with 
such an origin as being possible, plausible, and the 
best to be got. And yet at one's very hand in our 
own language the true meaning of the word is 
hidden under another spelling in the word secure, 
which comes from the Latin through a figurative 
use. What could be more natural than that meat so 
cut as to be likely to fall to pieces should be secured 
from doing so ? Thus the cook or butcher would 
secure the meat, and extend the name of the act to 
signify the instrument with which the act was done. 



COMMON EBBOBS AS TO DERIVATION. 33 

A few words maybe allowed before we leave the 
subject on one other common error as to deriva- 
tions, that, namely, which originates in the deter- 
mination to find an origin for words or names 
which were doubtless at first arbitrarily formed, or 
accidentally applied. As a general rule, every word, 
perhaps every name, has an origin ; but, especially 
in the matter of names, there are multitudes occur- 
ring, in works of fiction for instance, entirely con- 
structed by their authors. These are subject to no 
rules of interpretation, and should be left alone. 
We all know how many writers, especially German 
ones, have seemed to discover in the works of 
Shakspeare depths of philosophic meaning, trans- 
cendent if not transparent, which common sense 
incontinently scouts ; we feel as impatient at such 
laborious efforts as we should at a person who 
looking on a beautiful picture hanging on the walls 
of a gallery, should insist on proving to us his 
frantic theory that the figure of the original must 
be behind the canvas, though the picture may be 
but a fancy sketch. Just as there have been found 
commentators to expound on the most philosophical 
and recondite principles, that part of Goethe's 
' Faust ' which the author himself pronounced to 
be, not only without hidden meaning, but absolute 
nonsense (Dummes Zeug), so the cacaethes derivandi 
leads people to seek for derivations, even in the 
D 



34 WORD GOSSIP. 

most arbitrary names. A single but striking illus- 
tration is that of deducing the name of Swift's 
imaginary hero, Lemuel Gulliver, from the words 
Gull-i~ver, to gull or deceive in truth. Swift might 
have called his hero Johnson just as well as Gulli- 
ver. In fact, the very existence of Gulliver as an 
actual hondficle name to the present day in a part 
of the country where Swift spent many years, 
affords a strong presumption against any such in- 
tentional meaning on the author's part, while to 
gull in truth, if the phrase mean anything beyond 
a bull, was neither the object aimed at, nor the 
effect produced, by the famous book of travels. 



35 



CHAPTER IV. 

ON ENGLISH WORDS FAULTILY FORMED. 

Like very many other things in this world, we 
must take our language as we get it. A w r ord 
once really fixed in our speech and literature, if 
it fulfil the requisite conditions for permanence, 
that is, if it be necessary and expressive, may well 
defy the best endeavours purists may direct against 
its use, if falsely interpreted, or against its very 
existence, if ill-constructed. It must not, there- 
fore, be supposed that the present chapter, while 
noting some instances of such words occurring in 
our language, aims at anything further than to 
draw the attention of the reader to peculiarities in 
the use and structure of words in the language, 
which may prove interesting to some who have 
used such words throughout their lifetime without 
reflecting on their proper force and origin. 

And by words faultily formed, I do not at pre- 
sent mean words formed by perversion of those 
d2 



35 WOBD GOSSIP. 

ordinary and established laws which, careful ob- 
servers have discovered and noted as regulating, 
for the most part on inflexible principles, the 
passage of words from one language to another, 
and from other languages to our own ; but rather 
such words as have been adopted from other lan- 
guages by oral instead of written tradition, and 
which in. such transmission have either lost a part 
of their native form, or had agglomerated to 
themselves part of some other words commonly 
combined with them in their native use. Before 
giving hond fide instances of such words, which 
are to be found in all our dictionaries, and are so 
fixed in use as to be for ever incapable of altera- 
tion and correction, I venture, as showing how 
such errors originate, to cite a couple, which I 
have noted in my own neighbourhood, as being 
more or less on the way to acceptance by the un- 
educated, and the first of which may in fact be 
called an accepted dialectic expression in West 
Surrey. 

A few years ago a young man who had been to 
sea returned home to that part of the country to 
see his friends. He had been steward on board a 
West India packet, and his letters led his parents 
to suppose he had laid by a considerable sum 
of money. He arrived about ten o'clock at night, 
in a destitute condition, stating that in our very 



OX ENGLISH WORDS FAULTILY FOEJIEL. 37 

quiet neighbourhood, and within a furlong of its 
busiest part, he had been stopped by two men, 
who robbed him of his savings and a gold watch. 
After this adventure he had hurried home more 
than a mile further, without making anyone 
acquainted with his loss. The tale met with no 
more credit than it deserved ; he had doubtless, 
as too many sailors do, fallen into bad hands on 
his way home, and run through all he had. I 
noticed that the villagers, in talking over the 
matter, nearly all used oue special expression as 
to his conduct ; it was this : ' Yery strange, Sir, 
that he shouldn't 'a made any sort of novation' 
meaning any sort of outcry, in a place where he 
could not fail of being heard. 

Now the word oration, being very rare in 
modern use, the most likely occasion on which 
they could have heard this word must have been 
in church, where, hearing that ' On a set day 
Herod . . . made an oration, . . . and the people 
gave a sliout, &c.,' they learned to look on the word 
as suggestive and significative of shouting, and, 
ignorant of its structure, misdivided the words I 
have italicised ; thus out of an oration, making the 
new form a novation, with a new, but comprehen- 
sible sense. 

The second instance I give is more exceptional, 
and from the nature of the case one not likely ever 



C8 WOBD GOSSIP. 

to become general. One of those charming rustic 
characters whose vanity finds a happy vent in ■ air- 
ing ' the longest possible words, used it to a poor 
consumptive neighbour, whom his clergyman was 
urging to take more than he did of open summer 
air. ' Ay, George boy, 'pend upon't what parson 
says is right ; there's nothing like nailing that 
mospher.' 

Nothing but the context, so to speak, could 
have explained to the perplexed parson that the 
new word this circumlocutory linguist was form- 
ing meant, ' There's nothing like inhaling the 
atmosphere.' 

These instances may suffice to give a general 
notion of the way in which such errors as we are 
about to examine take their rise. Let us now take 
a few parallels to the word novation. 

The word alligator has had a syllable prefixed in 
coming into English use. The word is Spanish, 
lagarto, from Latin lacerta, which in sound is very 
like our own word of similar descent, lizard. But 
the word lizard would never have served the pur- 
pose of expressing the monster of its tribe, without 
some qualifying adjective ; and, therefore, those 
who first made the acquaintance of the animal 
adopted the Spanish name they heard given to it ; 
but their hearers, not recognising the structure of 
the name, compressed the two words a lagarto into 



ON ENGLISH WORDS FAULTILY FORMED. 39 

one, which, has supplied us with a distinct and in- 
dependent term for that particular lizard which we 
now call an alligator. 

Archbishop Trench, in his book on the ' Study 
of Words,' supposes alligator to be el lagarto, the 
lizard (par excellence), but by quoting Sir Walter 
Raleigh's use of the word without the Spanish 
article, he seems to deprive himself of evidence to 
the strict accuracy of his view. 

Louver, a window-like opening in a wall or roof, 
protected against rain, but not against air, by 
slanting bars, is another word formed by the 
agglomeration of the article to its root. A louver 
window (for the word louver has no proper claim 
to be a substantive at all) is strictly a window a 
Vouvert, exposed to the open air. The French 
preposition a has been converted into our English 
article a, and Vouvert (the open) into louver, now 
used independently of the article altogether. This 
will also explain the word lubber-hoards, the slant- 
ing boards placed in a louver window. 

Chandler again is a word which, in its extended 
sense of general dealer, has been ridiculously in- 
creased by the prefixal of the letter c. The word 
originally is handler, equivalent to the German 
handler, dealer ; but chandler (from the Latin 
candela, a candle, through the French chandelier, 
a candle maker), being found in the language, 



40 WORD GOSSIP. 

handler was confounded with it. Thus "both 
words were injured, handler being misconstructed 
and almost lost, while chandler passed froni a 
definite to a general term, and instead of express- 
ing a single occupation, came to require an explan- 
atory adjunct to fix its meaning. So we say a 
corn-chandler, or a tallow-chandler. It is true 
this error may have been fostered by the fact, that 
the term of chandlery proper is applied to two 
trades formerly distinct in England, and still so 
in many parts of the continent, namely, tallow 
and wax- chandlery ; and distinct names designate 
these distinct trades on the continent. Thus a 
tallow-chandler is in French chandelier, in German 
Lichtzieher ; while a wax- chandler is in French 
drier, and in German Kerzengieszer, OYKerzenzieher. 
But however this may be, the error of structure in 
the word has proved of practical inconvenience, as 
necessitating the use of adjectives to distinguish 
two words, each of which in its proper sense is 
self- explanatory. 

We should think it strange to hear a man 
say he had eaten two noranges ; and yet structu- 
rally his language would be justified. We take 
our term from the Spanish naranja, probably be- 
cause the fruit was first or chiefly imported from 
Spain. The Spaniards have it from the Arabian 
ndrang, Persian narenz. Naturally, as we have seen 



ON ENGLISH WORDS FAULTILY FORMED. 41 

how an oration may change into a novation, so a 
naranja, or a norange may change to an orange. 
But this error, unlike others I have quoted, is 
based on scholarship, and can show a fair excuse 
for its occurrence. The Low Latin word is 
orangia, unquestionably derived in the same er- 
roneous way as ours. Arabic and Persian being 
languages almost utterly unknown among Euro- 
peans, a European origin was naturally sought for 
the word. ISTow the Latins called the fruit malum 
a lire urn, the golden apple ; thence to malum auran- 
tiiim. however barbarous the formation, was no 
great transition ; and thence the use of the adjec- 
tive aurantitim without the malum, or jpomum, 
apple, was as easily admitted as, in our own 
language, china or delft is for China or Delft ware. 
Thus the ancients, with a certain show of reason, 
derived the word orange from aurans ; and a ver^y 
good derivation it was till a better was found, 
which ndrang or narenz certainly is, both structu- 
rally and historically. 

One of the best suggested derivations of the 
word Haberdasher (a famous crux, by the way, to 
the anatomists of English) will show us another 
instance of agglomeration of the article. I think 
it was in ' Notes and Queries ' that I read that a 
berdasli was a sort of neck-tie ; and a quotation 
given from the ' Guardian,' for March 23, 1712-13, 



42 WORD GOSSIP. 

contains the word as follows : — ' I have prepared 
a treatise against the cravat and berdash,' &c. If 
this be correct, haberdasher is a berdasher, the 
agglomerated a being aspirated in cockney fashion. 

Another instance of this error of agglomeration 
in the forming of words is to be found in the word 
furlough. Its etymon in its present form may 
give many an enquirer trouble to guess at, to 
whom, if the initial /be removed, the form urlough 
would immediately betray its identity with the 
German word urlaub (of the same military mean- 
ing as our term), but used in early German 
writings in its true sense, permission. (Of course 
the analogy of our military expression of the same 
idea, on leave, will strike every reader.) But 
why have we this initial / so unnecessarily pre- 
fixed to the word ? It is because in the German 
and cognate dialects, whence we have the word 
(/) urlough, the preposition equivalent to our on 
is auf, so that the expression auf urlaub, used first 
as a quotation, by hasty utterance became on 
f-urlough. 

"Without attending to the fact of words in our 
language being thus frequently altered from a 
confusion of the article a or an with the word 
itself, it would be very hard indeed to suggest a 
rational derivation for such a word as apron. In 
fact, the dictionaries I have at hand either do not 



ON ENGLISH WORDS FAULTILY FOBMED. 43 

attempt to explain its origin, or give a wrong one. 
Webster, for example, derives it thus : — ' Irish 
aprun ; a, or ag, and Celtic bron, the breast.' We 
have only, however, to prefix the indefinite article, 
and redivide the word, to see its real and almost 
obvious derivation ; an apron, a napron, French 
naperon, a napkin. Nappe is the French word 
for a tablecloth, and the diminutive napperon 
means strictly a table-napkin. Having already 
the word table-napldn in our language, napperon 
was not wanted to express it, and was consequently 
applied in England, firstly to what we should call 
now a pinafore, used at table, then to anything 
worn as a pinafore. By a curious analogy, the 
French general term for an apron retains a special 
reference to its first use at table, the word by 
which it is expressed being tablier. 

This word apron, moreover, has not the excuse 
for its truncated form that other words we have 
examined may plead, namely, that they entered in 
such form through error, inseparable from oral 
transmission ; for the correct form, naperon, is 
actually used by Chaucer ; and the fact of its so 
early literary use should have preserved it from 
coming down to the present time in the inaccurate 
form it has. 

The most reasonable derivation of our word 
adder shows that it should be spelt with a pre- 



44 WORD GOSSIP. 

fixed n, natter, or nadder. It is true that, besides 
the word natter in German, the word otter also is 
used; but this, as far as I can ascertain by a 
tolerable induction of instances, is always used of 
what we would call a viper ; and the uniform 
presence of the letter n in the equivalent for adder 
in all the cognate dialects would seem to warrant 
the classification of our word amongst those 
erroneously formed by confusion of the article. 
Thus we find in Gothic nadrs, in old Saxon nadra, 
in old ISForse nadr and nadra, in old High German 
natra and natara, and in Anglo-Saxon nddre. 

Let us take next the word diamond. This 
word, by a striking coincidence, has lost in all the 
Romance dialects and in English the prefix a, 
essential to its significance, while in the German 
ones that letter was retained for ages after it had 
vanished from languages which might have been 
expected to retain it. But the fact is, the Germans 
received the word as an importation, and kept it 
much as they found it : the Romance nations took 
it, ignorantly, for a native term, and took those 
liberties with it which men are apt to do with the 
words they use in ordinary conversation. The 
word is Greek, adamas (gen. adamantos), con- 
structed from a, a privative prefix signifying not, 
and, daman, a verb, meaning to quell. The word 
itself then signifies invincible, and is well adapted 



ON ENGLISH WORDS FAULTILY FORMED. 45 

to express the surpassing hardness of the diamond. 
Now the Greeks conld never drop this prefix a, for 
it would leave the word signifying vincible, instead 
of invincible ; but this fact being unknown to 
ordinary speakers of Romance languages, who took 
the word late from the Latin, they dropped off the 
a, and we have followed them. The sort of process 
of change I have been noting was carried still 
further as regards this particular word in the 
Romance languages by dropping off the d, and 
using the word thus formed, aimant, to signify a 
magnet ; though it may be that this latter form is 
a compression of the root word adamant, without 
any previous loss of the prefix a. 

But as this seems to lead us far away from our 
proposed subject, let me return to the considera- 
tion of another word, the origin of which I have 
nowhere seen explained. I mean the word dapple . 
The letter d is in this case redundant, unless we 
assign it an iterative force ; otherwise, that the 
word should be apple is beyond all question. Some 
writers have referred it to the root of dab, others 
to the French tab is, streaked (as we speak of a 
tabby cat, &c, or of tabinet, a sort of watered 
poplin), but no one would call a horse marked 
with similar streaks dappled in our sense of the 
word at all. The word, as ordinarily used, is 
applied to markings on a horse's ccat of a round 



46 WORD GOSSIP. 

shape, reflecting light much as a number of smooth 
and glossy apples do ; and it is precisely from this 
resemblance that the word is derived. We find in 
German that the pure and simple word exists, 
without any unnecessary prefix. Apfeln (literally, 
to apple) is the equivalent for our verb to dapple, 
and an ajpfelschimmel signifies a dapple-grey 
horse. It is further interesting to observe that 
the French have the equivalent pommele (from 
pomme, an apple), signifying dappled. 

This leads me to a digression upon our word 
pommel, to beat. This word is not derived from 
the French pommeau, a knob (through pomme, 
Latin, pomum), in the same way as the pommel 
of a saddle, &c. is ; but rather from the verb to 
variegate in colour. Thus the expression 'to 
pommel one soundly ' is equivalent to saying ' to 
beat one black and blue,' * to cover one with bruises; 
not as Webster, for instance, lays it down, ' to 
beat with something thick or bulky,' however cal- 
culated such treatment may be to produce that 
peculiar chromatic effect which the word in its 
true sense implies. 

How readily a person who has never studied 
the history of words will scout the idea of the 
word enamel being the very same as smelt ; to such 

* Comp. German blciuen, to pommel, beat blue. 



ON ENGLISH WOBDS FAULTILY FOEMED. 47 

the jocose derivation even of pickled encumber, 
from Jeremiah King,* would seem less unreason- 
able ; yet the fact is indisputable. Instead of 
enamel we should say amel (from the French email, 
Old French esmail, Spanish esmalte, Middle Latin 
smaltum ; all coming from the Old High German 
smalfja/ii, to smelt, or melt). And, as might be 
supposed, we actually find the old word amel in 
the dictionaries, though enamel has superseded 
it ; another instance of correct literary use being 
overborne by the prevalence of an error. The 
French would speak of 'a work en email,' in amel, 
and English ears naturally confounding the French 
preposition with the word it governed, adopted 
and retained the false structure enamel, which now 
is as inseparably smelted into our language as the 
vitreous particles of which amel, or enamel, consists, 
are blended by the action of the furnace. 

* Given in Home Tooke's ' Diversions of Purley.' 



48 WORD GOSSIP. 



CHAPTER V. 

WORDS OF CHANGED OR LIMITED MEANING. 

Passing from these instances of faulty construction, 
originating as they do for the most part in con- 
fusion of sound, and ignorance of the exact form 
of words of foreign importation, I now come to 
consider a few specimens, out of a vast number 
which our language affords, of words which, as 
ordinarily used, have almost entirely lost their 
original meaning ; and at the head of these I 
place two which have actually changed places al- 
together in reference to one another : I allude to 
the words lecture and sermon. It is very common 
to hear a clergyman spoken of as preaching a 
sermon in the morning, and giving a lecture in the 
afternoon ; by which the speaker means that the 
morning discourse is read from manuscript, and 
the afternoon one delivered extempore, or from 
notes. The exact meaning of lecture implies, how- 
ever, the act of reading, while that of sermon 



WORDS OF CHARGED OB LIMITED MEANING. 49 

signifies an harangue. The only origin of such a 
singular interchange of meanings that occurs to 
me is this : that the lecture reached its present 
sense from being* the designation of some sort of 
religious meeting, probably held in a priyate dwell- 
ing or unconsecrated building, for the purposes 
principally of reading the Scriptures, and that the 
simple exposition of the portions read being natu- 
rally far more familiar and unconstrained in style 
than the ordinary sermon preached from a single 
Terse, caused the name gixen to the whole pro- 
ceedings of such a meeting to be applied to the 
expository part of it alone, in contradistinction to 
the more elaborate form of address which the 
pulpit sermon generally does, and once almost 
uniyersally did, present. 

Again, such a word as buxom has almost entirely 
lost its true meaning. Strictly speaking, it signi- 
fies pliant, flexible, obliging; but more than the 
great average of those who use or hear the word 
consider it an amiable and semi-flattering epithet 
for a fat and genial landlady. As the word bom- 
bastic, which we shall consider elsewhere, is never 
applied to a woman, so the word buxom is never 
applied to a man ; * its proper use being more or 
less referable to domestic intercourse, it is plain 

* Chaucer has an instance, however, in the ' SchipmanneV 
Tale ; ' but there a man is said to be { buxom to his wyfiV 

E 



50 WOBD GOSSIP. 

that the lords of the creation would not have it 
applied to themselves, or admit themselves under 
any circumstances to be pliable by their wives. 
The average better-half of creation, however, is 
wise enough not to insist in applying the expres- 
sion to ber husband, beng quite content in very 
(perhaps too) many cases with the conviction, 
understood though seldom expressed in equivalent 
terms, that ' she can wind him round her little 
finger.' 

Such alterations as these I point out, of course 
arise in the first instance from ignorance of the 
exact force of the words used ; and the right 
meaning being once arrived at, the wrong usage 
loses ground; but there are words which some will 
persist in misapplying, from a mere notion of 
fashion, in spite of all explanation. Sucb a word, 
to take a homely instance, is apple-tart, as applied 
to what should be called apple-pie. 

As in matters of attire the highest in the land 
are the slaves of the lowest ; since ladies, instead 
of finding out once for all what style of dress is 
the best adornment of beauty, are compelled by the 
necessities of the modiste to spend their lives in a 
continual search after impossible perfection of 
apparel ; so the simplest words are liable to the 
caprice of that ubiquitous impersonal elf, fashion ; 
who, in the case of senseless perversion of language 



WOBDS OF CHANGED OB LIMITED MEANING. 51 

to winch. I now refer, may have set the error going 
by a misguiding whisper in the ear of some ignor- 
ant housekeeper, as she tried to make her * memi 
die diner ' as un-English as possible. 

And once Mrs. A has heard Lady B 

speak of apple-pie as apple-tart, can the present 
writer, or even the Philological Society itself (which 
has published a most interesting cookery book # ) 
hope to save a good old word from losing at her 
hands one at least of its senses ? Let me, notwith- 
standing, say a word in favour of apple-pie. 

The only reason I ever heard for calling an 
apple-pie an apple-tart (beyond that of its being 
or seeming fashionable), is the necessity of distin- 
guishing between a meat and a fruit pie. But when 
does such necessity arise? We talk of veal-pie, 
or of pigeon-pie, without confusion, though both, 
may be together on the same table, while a meat 
pie and an apple pie never appear together, and 
consequently may both be spoken of as pie without 
distinction or confusion ; again, would not this 
argument require those who hold it to speak also 
at Christmas time of mince-tarts ; and wou'd not 
the veriest infant resent the injury done to the 
genius of the British language if called upon to 
declare that A was an apple tart, which B bit and 

* Liber Cure Cocorum, circa 1440, a.d Edited for the 
Philological Society, by K. Morris. 1865. 
e 2 



52 WOBD GOSSIP. 

C cut ? Surely the eommoii sense distinction of 
the two terms lies in this, that a tart is baked on a 
flat dish, while a pie is baked in a deep one. 

The literal meaning of the word tart, brought to 
us through the French tourte, from the post- classi- 
cal Latin torta, is a twist, a signification very little 
suited to the form of ape, though comprehensive 
enough when assigned to the ornamentation of a 
tart, according to the definition I have ventured to 
give of it. 

The word tradition is now almost universally 
applied to oral as opposed to written records, and 
this, in common with many other arbitrary limita- 
tions of the first meaning of words, may be re- 
garded as less an error than an instance of the 
spontaneous tendency of language to let drop what 
is needless from its resources, while retaining what 
is useful. The word tradition is wanted in English 
to express oral but not to express written records, 
and hence it is that Webster, in his dictionary, 
actually limits its sense to oral communications 
tvithout written memorials, a limitation the strict 
accuracy of which is, however, disproved, strangely 
enough, by the very instance he quotes in its 
support i ' Stand fast, and hold the traditions 
which ye have been taught, whether by word, or 
our epistle \2 Thess. ii. 15). 

The word starve, again, which in its first and 



OF CHASGED OB LIMITED MEANI1 

widest sense signifies to die, has become Hmitecl in 
practice almost entirely to one sort of death, that 
by! : r ; and though the occasional (and perfectly 
correct) expression to starve with :: 77 may be cited 
in refutation of this statement, we hare but to con- 
sider the meaning of the substantive formed from 
verb, sta't r.~' . \ to see hovr nearly complete 
the limitation of the general term to one particular 
sense has become. 

TVhen we speak of resenting and resentment we 

asrain nse a word of general signification in a 

restricted sense ; the primary meaning of the verb 

is to ft . v v :" ice. A Frenchman would say, 

* II resseniit nne vive douleur,' for ' He felt acute 

- we only nse the word to express the 

: anger, more or less exhibited. And 

here a remark may not seem out of place as to the 

stance to our comprehension of the Bible (and 

of many old book- besides), which we may derive 

a remembering this tendency in our language 

to restrict words of general meaning to a single 

v ; vial sense. 

TVe look on jeoJ.ev.sy as an odious failing, and 

jealous person as possessing an odious and 

vable disposition, and, if we be ignorant that 

the word in its general sense means zeolev.s, we 

• find a trial to our faith in reading that ' the Lord 

our God is & jealous God,' and to our comprehension 



54 WOBD GOSSIP. 

in reading that Elijah, pleaded, as a self-justifica- 
tion, that he had i been very jealous for the Lord of 
hosts.' 

In the same way we might be staggered at find- 
ing indignation and revenge classed as good fruits 
of godly sorrow in 2 Cor. vii. 11 ; but the fact is 
worth noting, that nearly every passion and senti- 
ment in our nature which can be expressed by 
words, was implanted in that nature for a good and 
pure purpose, and that ifc is only the too general 
perversion of that purpose to one which is baser 
and meaner, which has made the names descriptive 
of such passions and sentiments express only what 
they express oftenest, that which is bad and blame- 
worthy, instead of that which is pure and good. 
So, though such things as just anger, proper 
pride, and holy jealousy or zeal exist, we cannot 
express them without a qualifying adjective before 
them, since anger, pride, and jealousy, without 
such qualification, bring only evil things before our 
minds. 

Talking of resentment seems naturally to bring 
us to revenge, an old word to express which has 
entirely changed in meaning. I mean the neuter 
verb to reck, which comes from the Gothic active 
verb vrekan, Anglo-Saxon vrecan, to pursue, avenge. 
The word with, us now means to heed, care, take 
(angry) notice of, and has passed this sense on 



WOBDS OF CHANGED OR LIMITED MEANING. 55 

into the adjective reckless. The necessities of our 
language have indeed retained the active sense of 
the parent verb in the word to wreak (vengeance) ; 
but it is curious to note, that even in this form the 
government of the primitive verb is altered by an 
unaccountable pleonasm, and that, strictly speak- 
ing, in saying 'to wreak vengeance on,' we are 
saying, 'to revenge one's vengeance on,' instead of 
using the simple expression ' to revenge.' 

One important sense of the word method, again, 
a cunning, crafty, roundabout way, is entirely 
lost ; which may teach us how inaccurate it is to 
talk of a direct "method, &c. On the other hand 
a highly strained meaning of a word, whose very 
structure should give warning against such error, 
is constantly assigned to ohnoxious. How often we 
hear some one spoken of as ' a most obnoxious 
person,' though the true sense of such a phrase is 
equivalent to saying he is very servile.* To con- 
vey in accurate language the sense in which the 
word is generally used, the speaker should be 
careful to state to what or to whom a person is 
obnoxious. 

The common expression, t to smell a rat,' in the 
sense of conceiving suspicion, gives a curious 
instance of restriction of sense. The German 

* * Si ant superbus, ant obnoxius videar.' Liv. xxiii. 12. 



56 WOBB GOSSIP- 

phrase, Unrath wittem, to smell something objec- 
tionable (comp, to be in bad odour), is its origin. 
The privative German prefix un has passed into the 
English article a, and this and a perverted transla- 
tion have supplied us with a phrase very familiar 
and very comprehensible, no doubt, but still more 
essentially figurative than its right form would be ; 
for why we should speak of smelling a rat rather 
than a cat or a mouse, or a rabbit, in such a con- 
nection, I am at a loss to conceive. 

The word van, as applied to a light cart, has 
become greatly limited since its first introduction ; 
for it is a great error to assign its origin in this 
sense, as most dictionaries do, to the same root as 
the van of an army ; unless, indeed, the figure 
Hysteronproteron were even more than now appli- 
cable to military matters, and the cart were 
literally put before the horse, by sending the 
baggage in front of the army. The word van in 
this sense is merely the end of the word caravan, 
just as in the same way we use the word bus for 
omnibus, A caravan originally meant a train of 
travellers ; it then came to be applied to a train 
of strollers, showmen, menagerie keepers, &c. ; 
then, as sometimes such parties were few and 
could be conveyed in one light waggon, such a 
strollers' covered waggon was called a caravan. I 
remember well, when a child, that the word in its 



WOBDS OF CHARGED OB LIMITED MEANING. 57 

unabbreviated form was still applied to covered 
furniture waggons in the large city in which I was 
brought up, and that I used firmly to believe such 
vehicles to have been used by Queen Anne, whose 
taste was perpetuated by the form of their appella- 
tion, supposed by me to be '" Car of Anne.' 

Label, again, is a word now very rarely used, 
except as referring to heraldry or the medicine 
phial. Its origin is the Latin diminutive labellum, 
a little lip, which seems very far from our present 
sense of the word ; and yet its history is plain 
enough. We see in the old caricatures (and 
indeed in their ruder kindred, the wall frescoes 
executed in chalk by satirical street-boys), a sort 
of balloon represented as hanging from the mouths 
of the figures, on which is written what the 
character represented is supposed to be saying. 
This method was formerly used in very much 
higher works' of art, and there are few good 
collections of pictures in which specimens of its 
occurrence may not be found appearing in the 
works of the early painters. This appended lip it 
was which received the name of labellum, or label. 
But, it may be asked, how does this explain our 
ordinary application of the term to an oblong piece 
of paper pasted on the side of a medicine bottle ? 
This pasting on is a comparative novelty in 
compounding. The label used to be a piece of 



58 WOBD GOSSIP. 

paper, broad at one end and narrow at the other, 
where it was tightly tied round the neck, and 
close to the lip of the phial ; and, in point of fact, 
we see this practice still prevalent among the 
apothecaries on the continent, and its former 
general use among ourselves is amply attested by 
any book illustrations of twenty years old, which 
happen to represent a sick room. The shape of 
this literal label far more resembles that of the 
lip-balloons of which I have spoken above, than any 
of the rectangular slips pasted on phials in the 
present day. 

The fact that the word tippler, from originally 
meaning a publican, now means any habitual sot, 
may teach us how universally, even in early ages, 
the tapster became the slave of his opportunities, 
and may justify the common saying concerning a 
drunken Boniface, ' He is his own best customer.' 
And the further fact of the word sot, which I have 
just used, having become restricted from its 
general sense, foolish (Fr. sot), to signify a drunkard 
may also show how the long course of years which 
moulds the members of a language to their modern 
meanings, can bear striking witness to the truth, 
that drunkenness is indeed the ruling folly, as it is 
the crying sin, of the age and nation in which our 
earthly lot is cast. 

The word punctual is general in its first sense, 



WORDS OF CHARGED OB LIMITED MEANING. 59 

though we restrict its meaning to time ; while 
strangely enough the term tidy, which strictly 
means only punctual to time, has become a perfect 
and comprehensible expression for an absolute 
essentiality of accuracy and neatness ; and, in fact, 
expresses the widest extension of the word punctual 
as applied alike to time and place and duty. 

The word cant, which now- a- days signifies 
principally any expression of shallow and un- 
reasonable bigotry or hypocrisy, entered our 
language first, if I mistake not, as meaning the 
whining cry of professional beggars ; though its 
root being unquestionably the Latin cantare, to 
sing, it seems probable enough that it gained its 
beggar sense from some instinctive notion of its 
quasi- religious one. If we look at the whole class 
of words comprising enchant, incantation, &c, we 
find them all primarily referable to religious cere- 
monies of one sort or another ; and doubtless, in 
days when men believed in the efficacy of prayers 
repeated on their behalf as an opus operatum, apart 
from any sincerity on the part of their utterer, we 
can comprehend ho w important apart of a beggar's 
daily labour was the invoking, or seeming to in- 
voke, blessings on those who gave them alms. 
This, and the natural tendency to utter any oft- 
repeated phrases in a sing-song rhythmical tone, 
most probably gave the word cant its present 



60 WORD GOSSIP, 

meaning; and it is noteworthy that a precisely 
equivalent word is current now to express the 
same idea. I allude to the word patter, signifying 
the language of tramps and mendicants. Though 
this word has of course a different and evident 
root when it signifies the sound of hail or children's 
footsteps (comp. Fr. paite, Low German pott, a 
paw, &c), I cannot but think that, as applied to 
beggars' language, it takes its origin from the 
Pater nosters which beggars used to promise and 
pretend to say on behalf of those who aided them. 
Very appositely, though unintentionally, Longfellow 
uses the term in this connection in his ' Midnight 
Mass for the Dying Year ' : — 

* And the hooded clouds, like friars, 
Tell their beads in drops of rain, 
And patter their doleful prayers, 
But their prayers are all in vain. 
All in vain 1 ' 

If we take the common meaning of a challenge in 
the present day, we find it to be a provocation to 
combat, or at all events a defiance of some sort ; the 
legal sense, however, that of lodging an objection, 
is much nearer to the original one, which strictly 
signifies a calumny. As, however, our present idea 
of the word calumny is limited to & false accusation 
or slander, it becomes a reasonable question to ask, 
why we should have two words,, radically identical, 



WOBDS OF CHANGED OB LIMITED MEANING. 61 

and yet so different in meaning, as challenge and 
calumny. The history of the fact is simple ; we 
derive the word calumny direct from Lat. calumnia f 
in the sense of slander ; hut the old French takes 
ckalenge, and hands it down to us in another and 
more exact sense of the Latin word, namely, that 
of a denial, a legal chicane or objection* Thus to 
give or enter a challenge was first to interpose 
against the course of judgment ; and would corre- 
spond with the legal term demur (lit, delay), de- 
murrer as we now use it ; then it was employed (as 
it still is) to signify the act of a prisoner in object- 
ing to any particular individual forming a part of 
a jury to try him, and was naturally used in this 
sense, from the fact, that to make such an objection 
valid, it was held necessary to show some sort of 
reason why the proposed juror should not be con- 
sidered an impartial trier. And here our modern 
sense of calumny crops out ag*ain, so to speak, in 
the implication that a man on his oath was likely 
to be biassed from making a true deliverance. In 
fact, the word thus used implies no longer a quibble 
or chicane,, but an expression of distrust. And thus 
we come again to a striking parallelism between the 
legal and conventional meaning of the word chal- 
e, for distrust is the exact and literal meaning of 



* ' Calumnia dicendi terapiis eximere ' — to speak against 
time. Cicero. Epist. ad. Q. Fratrem, II. 2, 3, 



62 WORD GOSSIP. 

the word defiance ; and it is also worth remarking, 
that our language, in adopting two terms meaning 
distrust to express as they do the calling out of an 
adversary to combat, leave us no others but these 
for such use ; since the proper word for such an act, 
provocation (catting out), finding its place so sup- 
plied, has set up business on its own account in 
another line, and refuses to concern itself with the 
expression of anything besides trial to temper. 

Multitudes of words might be instanced more or 
less striking, as altered or restricted in sense from 
their original meanings ; but I shall refer to but 
one more, the true force of which is strangely 
neglected. I mean the word trial, as applied to 
affliction. 

How few there are who talk of their own or their 
neighbours' trials, who at all think of what is tried, 
or what the result of the trials is ; how many an 
utterly godless, irreligious man will speak of his 
losses, or his sicknesses, or his bereavements, as 
trials, without reflecting that he is talking utter 
nonsense. True, those he speaks to are like-minded 
with himself, and understand him ; he takes in his 
lips the religious phrase of trial to express his mere 
worldly sense of suffering, just as he •takes the 
relioious name of Christian to express the worldly 
sense of Englishman, or European, or white man, 
as the case may be, but with no more thought of 



WOBDS OF CHANGED OB LIMITED MEANING. 63 

its right meaning than seems to be given to that of 
grace before meat when the guests are hunting for 
good places at a dinner party, or to the common- 
phrases (which are so seldom prayers) of ' Good- 
bye,' or ' God bless my soul ! ' But the use of the 
word trial implies something to try ; and what do 
afflictions try, unless it be the faith of one who 
trusts a Heavenly Father ? If, then, a man be 
without a faith to try, his sufferings are no true 
trials, and his calling them so only shows that he 
is adding maundering to his mourning, and con- 
founding the helpless c Kismet ' of the fatalist with 
the believer's confident - Thy will be done ! ' 



64. WOBB GOSSIP, 



CHAPTER VI. 

ON EAEELY NOTED PRIMITIVE MEANINGS OF 
ENGLISH WORDS. 

I purpose in the present chapter to discuss the 
etymology of some English words which, originally 
figurative, have lost that distinctive character 
from their general and primary meaning becom- 
ing limited in ordinary use to some one or more 
particular senses to the exclusion of the rest. 

The instances by which this peculiarity may he 
illustrated are very numerous, and any of my 
readers whom the subject happens to interest may, 
hy a little consideration of the words they use 
from day to day, or meet with in the conversation 
and writings of others, discover multitudes of 
eases similar to those which I am about to notice ; 
which in fact are only cited here as illustrations of 
a general principle, the remarking of w r hich may 
direct the merest amateurs of language to a line 
of independent examination calculated to afford 
them very considerable pleasure. 



PRIMITIVE MEANINGS OF ENGLISH WOBDS. 65 

Let us take, in the first place, the word person, 
as one affording an instance not only of some in- 
terest in its general use, hut also, from the erro- 
neous reference to it as the origin of another word, 
parson, showing what mistakes may be adopted 
and perpetuated by a neglect of the figurative 
element which the primary use of the word con- 
tains. 

The present meaning of the word. person, is in its 
widest and most accepted sense, synonymous with 
human individual. It can be applied with equal 
accuracy to man, woman, or child, of any rank, 
class, or quality ; in its plain form it is more gene- 
ral than mam, since it can be applied to members 
of a different sex and a different age of the human 
race than the word man can be ; and it is more 
particular than individual, since that term may be 
accurately applied not only to members of the 
human race, but to those of any class of animals 
and any class of things. Again, the word can be 
used to signify contempt (as the Quakers use the 
depreciative that, saying by little where they wish 
to express much, ' That Isaac,' or ' that Joseph ') ; 
and it may be used to express disgust, as in the 
words ' So-and-so is a most objectionable person.' 
Again, it may express distinction between classes, 
as when we are unwilling to speak of a milliner 
or a barmaid as a young lady (though, indeed, 

F 



66 WOBD GOSSIP. 

American notions would scout such hesitation), 
and we regard the class as sufficiently expressed, 
by speaking of 'the young person.' In this use, 
by the way, the word implies a female, since the 
same shade of difference does not need expression 
in talking of our own clumsier and coarser sex, 
which may be designated by so many familiar 
correlatives, which begin in man, and pass through 
lad maA fellow down to the more vulgar but equally 
expressive 'chap? So, again, the word person 
may be used as a matter of dignity, as we say ' A 
person of quality, a person of importance,' where 
we do not say 4 a man (or a woman) of quality.' 

And yet not one of these many senses gives the 
slightest hint of the original meaning of the word. 
It is formed of the two Latin words, per, through ; 
and sono, I sound ; and consequently signifies 
primarily that through which sound comes. But 
how on earth, the general reader will say, can this 
come to mean our word person ? And the answer 
is, after all, a very simple one. In the early drama 
no such thing was known as a female actor ; all 
the parts were taken by men and boys ; and what 
in theatrical language is called the get-up of a per- 
former consisted for the most part in a head-dress 
representing the character he undertook. This 
head-dress covered the face, forming a mask with 
a vast mouth, arid to this the word persona was 



PRIMITIVE MEANINGS OF ENGLISH WORDS. 67 

applied, from the fact of tlie actor's voice sounding 
■ tit rough the mask. Thus we ma y note in passing 
that the term person specially refers to the great 
mouth of the mask, as the word mash itself does, 
if we accept Grimm's derivation of that word, 
mast leave, to chew. Mash we still retain in the 
sense of an irregular drama, — for instance, the 
1 Comas ? of Milton ; while the word persona still 
testifies to its original meaning in the expression 
dramatis personal, signifying the cast of characters 
in a play. 

It will readily occur to the mind that our words 
personate and personify refer far more directly to 
the origin of the word than person itself, the sense 
of which has wandered so far and spread so widely 
from its root ; while the fact of a character in a 
play becoming a synonym for any member of the 
human race affords a sort of antecedent illustra- 
tion of the common adage so well expressed by 
Shakspeare, — 

1 All the world 's a stage, 
And all the men and women merely players.' 

A striking example of the earlier and more 
exact sense of the word is afforded by the follow- 
ing extract from a letter of the famous Charles 
Townshend, written in 1763, wherein, speaking of 
the minister Grenville, he says, ' This man has 
f2 



68 WORD GOSSIP. 

crept into a situation he cannot fill ; he has as- 
sumed a personage he cannot carry ; he has jumped 
into a wheel he cannot turn.' 

Had it not been that the original sense of the 
word ' person ' had been entirely lost in the wide 
meaning now assigned to it, the ridiculous error 
of deriving the word parson from it never could 
have occurred. A sort of ground for this idea 
certainly was afforded by Blackstone in his ' Com- 
mentaries/ in which he referred the word, parson to 
person, implying that the parson of a parish was in 
theory what he certainly is not necessarily in fact, 
the person, the individual of most importance in a 
parish. But Blackstone, though a good lawyer, 
was but an indifferent philologer, or he would 
have observed the necessary connection between 
parson and parish, specially illustrated by the 
existence of the word parishioner. The word par- 
son is, in fact, equivalent to parishion, a compres- 
sion of parochianus, which as a substantive means 
one "belonging to a parish. We English have taken 
parochianus in one sense, parson, for the minister 
belonging to a parish ; the French have taken it in 
another, paroissien, the inhabitant belonging to a 
parish ; and when our language needed to describe 
members of the parson's flock, the form equivalent 
to paroissien being already usurped in parson, it 
was obliged to form the word parishioner, as im- 



PRIMITIVE MEANINGS OF ENGLISH WOBDS. 69 

plying the relation of the ordinary resident to the 
appointed minister in a parish. This point might 
seem hardly necessary to discuss were it not that 
personal experience has shown me the false im- 
portance which may be attached to, and the false 
conclusions deduced from, a misapprehended ety- 
mology. Thus, at the present time especially, 
when systematic efforts are being made to foster 
pernicious and unwarranted priestly notions, and 
when every flimsy rag of language as well as of 
millinery is -invested with undue significance, in 
order to support assumptions which the common 
sense and the Christian instinct of Protestant 
England long since pronounced and will soon 
again, please God, pronounce to be intolerable, — 
at such a time it is of interest to those who would 
make the parson or clergyman a sacrificing priest 
instead of a commemorating minister, to assert, 
and insist upon the assertion, that the parson's 
name implies what they would have his nature to 
be ; that he is, in his priestly capacity, the one 
chief, prominent, and principal member of the 
parish, the person, par excellence, within the limits 
of his cure. But happily, in this case the science 
of language refutes this argument and the conclu- 
sion attempted to be drawn from it, just as in the 
same way the simplest study of the word priest, 
the meaning whereof some either studiously or 



70 WORD GOSSIP, 

stupidly pervert, will show it to contain in itself 
the idea of an elder only, quite apart from any 
shade of reference to sacrificial character. 
Cx^ Very few people in using the common phrase, 

to tell a story, consider how ill the expression cor- 
responds with the first use of the word tell. This 
means to count ; so to tell a story in the strict sense 
to count a story is absurd. The accurate metaphor 
is, to tell a tale, from the act of counting a number ; 
in which sense the Book of Exodus mentions that 
the Israelites were compelled to deliver their tale 
of bricks. This meaning of the verb tell is, except 
in dialectic use, obsolescent, though we find re- 
ference to it time after time in such phrases as c I 
would trust him with untold gold,' or in the the- 
atrical formula, i Here is the sum twice-told.' The 
languages of our immediate neighbours (to go no 
farther for illustration) have adopted exactly the 
same metaphor ; so we have in French the word 
comjpte, a reckoning ; conte, a story ; compter, to 
count ; raconter, to relate, recount. In German, 
zaJil, a number; zdlilen, to count; erzdhlen, to r elate j 
recount ; erzdlilung, a story, tale. 

But in connection with this word I am able to 
point out a very curious instance of the reversal 
of what may be called the natural process of deri- 
vation, in the formation of an apparently regular 
verb from an actually irregular participle. We 



PRIMITIVE MEANINGS OF ENGLISH WORDS. 71 

speak of church bells ringing, sounding, pealing, 
&c. ; so they sound to assemble the congregation to 
devotion ; the y ring out a merry peal for a wedding 
or a birth ; they are 6 rung backwards,' as the ex- 
pression is, when in the dead of night some quick 
alarm is needed ; but there is only one occasion, 
and that a solemn one, in which we properly can 
say the bells are tolled ; and that is ' when man 
goeth to his long home, and the mourners go 
about the streets.' It is true that an occasional 
misapplication of the term to some ordinary ring- 
ing of bells may be cited, but the exception almost 
proves the rule that the tolling of bells is specially 
funereal. If we turn to the dictionaries we find no 
sort of explanation given or reason assigned for 
this peculiar use ; thus Bailey gives simply 6 Toll, 
the sound of a bell, giving notice of a death or 
funeral ;' and 6 to toll a bell is to ring it after a 
particular manner, to give notice of the death or 
funeral of some person.' Johnson, again, on ■ toll, 1 
to sound as i a single bell,' frankly admits his 
ignorance of the etymology of the word. Webster, 
with his usual wisdom, explains the verb as a 
synonym of ring, giving, however, no illustration, 
but referring it to a Welsh root, ' tend, a throw or 
cast, a driving; and this,' he says, 'is the radical 
sense of sound ;' and he sagely adds, ' Tolling is a 
different thing from ringing,' without, however, 



72 WOBB GOSSIP. 

attempting to explain wherein the difference con- 
sists. The true origin of the term, however, lies 
hid beneath the unsuspected grammatical per- 
version to which I have already referred. 

To toll a hell is an inaccurate way of saying to 
tell a knell on a hell. When an inhabibant of a 
parish died it was customary to sound the church 
bell (passing bell) for two reasons : firstly, because 
it was supposed that the agitation of the air caused 
by the sound from consecrated bells availed to 
prevent evil spirits molesting the parting soul in 
its flight towards heaven ; and secondly, to invite 
neighbours and friends to join in supplication for 
that one about to depart from among them. At 
the end of the knell proper it was usual (and is 
still in many places) to indicate, by some pecu- 
liarity in the ringing, the sex and age of the de- 
ceased, and this was done by a certain number of 
strokes sounded apart, generally three for a child, 
six for a woman, and nine for a man. These 
strokes, of course, were counted, and had an 
arithmetical idea connected with them ; and thus 
the knell at its conclusion was said to be told or 
counted. By degrees this idea became confused 
or lost, and the participle told was referred to a 
supposed infinitive to toll, instead of its natural in- 
finitive to tell or count ; thus making an irregular 
infinitive to match an irregular participle by a 



PRIMITIVE MEANINGS OF ENGLISH WORDS. 73 

converse process to that so deservedly ridiculed by 
our great scholar, the late John Mitchell Kemble.* 
By carrying the history of this error a little 
further we may arrive at the elucidation of an 
otherwise most obscure proverb. The strokes 
told or counted at the end of a knell were called, 
from their office, tellers ; this term, again, was 
corrupted into tailors, from their sounding at the 
end or tail of the knell, and nine of these being 
given to announce the death of an adult male gave 
rise to the common saying, c Mne tailors make a 
man,' — a formula otherwise expressed by the very 
vulgar fraction, tailor = ™-, ' a tailor is the ninth 
part of a man.' It was this proverb which af- 
forded such an opportunity to the wit (commonly 
said to have been John Philpot Curran) who, 
having been given an entertainment by the guild 

* 'A remarkably absurd practice prevailed during the 
last century. The truly original and ground-forms of the 
language having been called irregular, a logical fallacy sug- 
gested to the purists that what was irregular must be wrong, 
and language was inundated with new weak preterites and 
participles, which have, thank Heaven, not maintained them- 
selves ; but we had then such pleasant formations as springed 
for sprang, hanged for hung ; the wind blew, and the cock 
crew no longer, — they now Mowed and crowed. In short, 
these masters and doctors, though grammarians and lexico- 
graphers, knowed a thing or two less than they ought,' &c. — 
Extract from an unpublished review of ' Grimm! s German 
Grammar,' by the late J. M. Kemble. 



74 WORD GOSSIP. 

of Tailors, said at Ms departure, ' Gentlemen, lam 
indebted to you for some most delightful hours, 
the enjoyment and honour of which shall never 
fade from my recollection. Gentlemen ' (there 
were just eighteen present), ' I wish you both a 
very good evening.' 

The game of billiards exhibits another illustra- 
tion of a similar grammatical perversion to that 
shown in to toll instead of to tell a knell. A 
player is continually said to have held a ball when 
he drives it into a pocket. So universal is this 
that to say ' he holed the red ball ' would startle 
listeners as much as the super-accurate follower 
of the Greek text did his hearers by reading out 
how ' Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria.' Yet 
there is meaning in the expression ' to hole a ball,' 
where there is none in saying ' to hold a ball,' 
which the player does not even touch with a 
finger. In this case the irregular participle of the 
verb to hold is assigned by error to the verb to 
hole, and this with such complete success as to 
have actually enabled the wrong verb, to hold, to 
oust the right one to hole altogether from its 
place. 

And these few words about billiards lead me 
back to our special subject through the word cue, 
which we use in two very different figurative 
senses, both springing from the same root, French 



PRIMITIVE MEJMNGS OF ENGLISH WORDS. 75 

queue, Lat. cauda, a tail, though their meaning is 
almost universally unconsidered. One of these 
senses is the dramatic one ; a player Traits for his 
ewe, that is. for the catchword of the last speaker, 
before beginning his part. This might indeed be 
assigned directly to the word queue, tail, as 
meaning the last word of the preceding speaker ; 
but it certainly would be a great strain upon the 
true force of the French word ; and the error of 
such interpretation is shown by the constant use of 
the expression, 'he took his cue from some one 
else.' It is. in fact, a billiard metaphor, and refers 
to the practice (alas ! so often necessary in country 
houses, where glue-loosening damp pervades the 
rarely used billiard-room, and encourages the 
leather tops to fly perpetually off the cues which 
are useless without them) of one player, having 
finished his turn, c giving the cue ' to another, who 
1 takes his cue' from him. 

The other sense is very different, though very 
familiar ; that, namely, in which we say, ' I am 
not in the cue for a thing,.' meaning not in the 
humour, not disposed for it. Johnson and Web- 
ster (who almost literally follows him), having no 
sort of idea of the origin of the expression, set it 
down as a mere vulgarism, dismissing anv farther 
reference to it in the same complacent way that 
the first fox most of us ever read of blasted the 



76 WOBD GOSSIP. 

grapes he could not reach, by his declaration of 
their being sour. But, whatever the ill- compre- 
hended expression may have been in Johnson's 
days, it is unquestionably no longer a mere vul- 
garism in ours. In fact, its history shows it to be 
a translation from the French, and probably to 
have been introduced by travellers, who centuries 
ago were more generally gentlemen than snobs ; 
and further, we shall see that the thing this so- 
called vulgarism signifies affords an actual illus- 
tration of politeness. 

Suppose an Englishman on the Continent for the 
first time, and desirous of obtaining admission to 
some public place to which crowds of people, like- 
minded with himself, are thronging ; whether it 
be the ticket office of a railway station before the 
excursion train starts, or the pit of a theatre on 
the first night of some long advertised new play, 
he will miss, and to his great surprise, the long- 
familiar features of the noble British squeeze. He 
comes in sight of ' his ' railway station, or ' his J 
theatre, as the case may be, and where he has ex- 
pected to see a heavy, sweltering mass of living 
beings, an agonizing agglomerate of melting mor- 
tality, the coast seems clear for him almost up to 
the very door. There are no mischievous shrieks 
from lads who try to create the idea of some unhappy 
woman fainting in the crush; nor are there the 



PRIMITIVE MEANINGS OF ENGLISH WOBDS. 77 

ordinary facilities for deliberate pocket-picking or 
the ordinary difficulties in preventing its practice. 
Our Englishman is astounded ; he wonders at 
the want of enthusiasm and eagerness in that 
Parisian public he has always believed to be so 
emotional and volatile. His first idea is to think 
how bad a speculation the excursion or the opera 
will be for its undertakers; his next is to turn 
back, lest he should be suspected capable of com- 
mitting himself so far as to patronise an unsuc- 
cessful entertainment ; his third is to see his pur- 
pose through now that he is there ; and so he 
makes his unimpeded way up to within two feet 
of the paying-place. There he has the privilege 
of beholding the ticket-giving process carried on 
with a sublime and deliberate calmness which 
augurs well for the early reception of his own 
long ready coin. One after another negotiates his 
ticket and passes on and in to the goal of his 
desires; if patient enough the Englishman may 
even see one hundred after another pay and pass, 
and still he holds his place and his purchase-money, 
and is no further than before. He rubs up his 
Latin, perhaps, to illustrate his feelings, but the 
very quotation he lights upon shows he is wasting 
his time: — 

' Eusticus expectat dum defluat amnis, at ille 
Labitur et labetur in omne yolubilis ^vum/ 



78 WORD GOSSIP. 

And yet there is no crowd, no thronging, no 
noise. But what is there instead ? Why, from 
the pay-place back, perhaps a furlong's length, 
there is a long, unbroken file of human beings, un- 
dulating like a slumbering eel, who are patiently 
waiting their turn to pass quietly in. "Woe to the 
rude wight who would try to force himself before 
a single man or woman of the train ! the Briton, 
wiser than he came, goes back along that length- 
ened line even to the very last, and, if he would 
get in at all, buttons himself on, as it were, 
metaphorically, to that last man, and waits his 
turn. There is not one there less eager for en- 
trance than himself ; but all know that the best 
way to secure such entrance is this quiet method 
which social good sense has sanctioned, and trusts 
to public opinion, a judge inexorable as Pluto, to 
enforce the fair decree, ' first come first served.' 

This single file of human beings is called in 
French the queue or tail. Of course, no one who 
has no desire to get a ticket chooses to stand 
behind another's back from five to fifty minutes 
for nothing ; so that it is a fair presumption that 
every member of the line wishes to procure a ticket 
for whatever is going on, and is disposed, or, as 
we may say, in the humour, to attend the perform- 
ance. Those who are not so pass on their way ; 
and hence to be disposed and anxious for a thing 



PRIMITIVE MEANINGS OF ENGLISH WORDS. 79 

is expressed by the saying ' to he in the queue for 
it,' and to be not disposed for it is ' not to be in the 
queue for it.' 

So excellent is this institution, and so well does 
it work abroad, that I am sure few will be disposed, 
now they understand the term with which it has 
furnished us, to agree with Johnson and Webster 
in calling it a vulgar, low expression ; while un- 
doubtedly many who can recall their sufferings in 
a rude, surging mob of British sight- seers would 
be glad in this respect of a little foreign vulgarity 
asserting its presence. Even as I write I seem to 
feel still the pangs of pain and indignation I 
suffered many years ago in a Jenny Lind squeeze, 
such as Dicky Doyle the unsurpassable has depicted 
in 'Manners and Customs of ye Englishe.' I had 
stood at the entrance of the concert-room nearly 
an hour before the doors were open and the ugly 
rush took place ; in the many surgings of the 
mighty crowd I had actually laboured to assist 
and protect two (I was going to say ladies, but 
ladies are grateful ; I can't say young persons, for 
they weren't young ; nor can I say women, for 
that is considered a slight ; or females, for such 
persons are no longer supposed to exist), — well, 
two individuals of a different sex from my own. 
Though admitting, as the rest of the crowd in- 
sisted, that persons of that sex should have stayed 



80 WORD GOSSIP. 

out of such a crush, I had to deal with the fact of 
their presence, and had done my best to keep the 
pressure off them ; I had remonstrated with a big 
man, ridiculed a middle-sized man, and bravely 
smashed the hat of a little man among those who 
' scrowdged ' them ; and will it be believed that 
when the doors at length were opened, and the t 
suffocating crush of human beings began to gurgle 
through the narrow passage like the wine out of 
a bottle turned upside down, one of those miser- 
able wretches I had so chivalrously defended, in 
her base selfish eagerness to advance, planted and 
worked, as a carpenter might a bradawl, her pre- 
ternaturally sharp elbow deep into my backbone ? 
I seemed to hear the cartilages creaking, while her 
penetrating ulna dug between my vertebrae as the 
sock of a plough struggles against great stones in 
the furrow; I had no time to turn, no room to fly, 
no breath to remonstrate ; I could only rage and 
suffer, as I did in fact, and as I have often done 
since in recollection of my usage ; and, alas ! on 
comparison of notes, I fear my painful experience 
is but too often and too accurately paralleled by 
that of my compatriots, 

But perhaps my readers are not in the cue for so 
long a digression apropos of explaining the term ; 
let me merely say, in taking leave of it, that we 
have a parallel expression to the French one, though 



PRIMITIVE MEANINGS OF ENGLISH WORDS. 81 

not so distinctly demonstrable. The British foot- 
crowd still throngs, presses, tramples, bat the 
French fashion is followed as it has been for cen- 
turies by carriages. Go down Langham Place 
about half-past ten on the night of some popular 
concert at St. James's Hall, and you will see the 
s of carriages already beginning there, and 
fringing the footway in its single file through all 
the length of Regent Street. Xow this is called 
1 the line,' and we often use as an expression of 
disinclination for any course or proceeding the 
phrase, ' it is not in my line at all.' 

As the game of billiards has supplied two 
phrases for our examination, so we may also draw 
a couple from the game of backgammon. How 
many people talk of ' turning the tables,' without 
an idea that they are using a figure of speech 
drawn from that game ! We talk of a cribbage- 
board, a Pope Joan board, a chess-board, a back- 
gammon-board ; but it is only in reference to the 
last that we use the word tables at all, and then 
as referring to that part of the board specially 
belonging to each competitor. And this is, in 
fact, the last remnant of the ancient name of the 
game. The word bad: gam in on means 'the game 
(gamon)* of the trough (hac),' which is a correct 

* Compare the exclamation { Gammon ' with the phrase, 
{ To make same.' 



82 WORD GOSSIP. 

descriptive term for the pastime ; but in early 
times it was universally known as the game of 
tables. Now even supposing a chess-board to have 
been called a table, it never could have^been called 
by the plural name tables, and our adage is uni- 
versally to turn the tables ; and practically to turn 
the tables, or backgammon-board, is entirely to 
reverse the relative positions of two antagonists. 

The accuracy of this derivation is obvious, once 
we become aware of the fact that bach gammon 
went by the name of the game of tables ; but the 
derivation of our expression ' to hit a blot,' a meta- 
phor taken from the same game, may not be so 
generally admitted. 

Johnson refers the word blot to the French blot* 
tir ; which, however, only exists as a reflective verb, 
se blottir, to squat, crouch, cower. How on earth 
this gives auy idea such as we can connect with a 
blot on a copy, a blot on one's escutcheon, &c, I 
am unable to apprehend. Webster, again, gives as 
.its etymon the Gothic blautlijan, to stain ; while 
Richardson, following Home Tooke in his ' Diver- 
sions of Purley,' makes it equivalent to be-hlot, 
which he says is the regular past participle of the 
y erb be-hlidan (lit., be-lid), to cover; adding that 
4 a blot upon anything extends just as far as that 
thing is covered and no farther.' 

But how is this to explain the meaning of a 



'PRIMITIVE MEANINGS OF ENGLISH WORDS. 83 

Hot at backgammon, when we know that the fact 
of being covered or not makes all the difference 
between a point or a blot in that game, and that a 
blot is precisely that which is not covered at all ? 

Johnson does not attempt an explanation ; and, 
indeed, where he would draw the common mean- 
ing of the word from the French blottir, to crouch, 
no lucid interpretation of the backgammon sense 
can be expected. He merely gives the backgam- 
mon use without comment, and Webster simply 
quotes his words. Richardson, in turn, ignores 
that use altogether, not referring to backgammon 
at all, or noting our common phrase of ' hitting a 
blot,' for finding out a weak place in anything; 
neither does Home Tooke make any reference to 
the term. 

Now the confusion of the two first-mentioned, 
and the silence of the two last, are caused by over- 
looking a simple fact which it is very important 
should be kept in view by all etymological en- 
quirers ; and that is, that in very many cases 
words exactly the same in form are different in 
sense, having entered our language, as it were, 
from different directions. This fact appears in the 
two senses of the word blot : rational explanations 
of the ordinary sense and its origin are given ; but 
the meaning of the word as a term of backgam- 
mon implying exposure cannot possibly be referred 
g2 



84 WOBD GOSSIP. 

to a root implying to cover. In the backgammon 
sense blot is cognate with the German blosz, naked, 
bare ; and on turning to the dictionary we find 
that a blot at backgammon is expressed in German 
by the word blosze, lit., nakedness, exposure ; while 
our very phrase, ' to hit a blot,' is literally identical 
with the German one, ' eine Blosze treffen. 9 

The word period, again, except in scientific use, 
is one which has lost all immediate connection 
with its radical and original sense. As referred to 
time we may say (and do say very often), English 
literature may be classed under three periods : 
from Chaucer to the Reformation (say 1350 to 
1520, 170 years), from the Reformation to Milton 
(say 1520 to 1660, 130 years), and from Milton's 
time to ours (say 200 years) ; and the use of this 
expression, which the necessities of our language 
have rendered universal, is still inaccurate : while 
if we speak of a number of periods of time of equal 
length, such as centuries, years, months, weeks, 
we shall be using the word with perfect accuracy. 
For we take it metaphorically from its astronomi- 
cal use, which expresses the recurring and equal 
measures of the time taken by a heavenly body to 
complete its orbits ; and our substantive and 
adjective, periodical, still retains the accurate as- 
tronomical idea which the word suggests. But our 
use of the word period in the sense of punctuation 



PRIMITIVE MEANINGS OF ENGLISH WORDS. 85 

is still more involved. When a planet has com- 
pleted an observed circuit it does not cease to 
revolve, but nevertheless the idea of completion 
has so far and so generally suggested the idea of 
cessation, that we actually have taken the word im- 
plying the planet's entire circuit to express our 
notion of its conclusion only, and close a sentence 
with a full stop under the name of a period. The 
establishment of this sense, again, has given us 
another metaphor, and from the use of a period or 
full stop in writing we have learnt, in the sense of 
terminating or checking any course of proceeding, 
to speak of putting a period or a stop to it. We 
may further note in this case (as may be noted also 
in numberless others) how by some unconscious 
instinct of accuracy, when the original sense of a 
word has become lost in its metaphorical one, the 
words used in connection with it are still suited 
to the primitive though forgotten idea ; for the 
word period implies a circuit, a course round a 
centre, and to express smoothness and accuracy of 
a writer's sentences we constantly speak of his 
periods being well rounded. 

Some use the word salient in two senses, either as 
assailable or projecting ; thus we speak, and quite 
correctly, of a salient angle, that is of an angle 
projecting from a mathematical figure, or from a 
fortification. The meaning of the word itself is 



86 WORD GOSSIP. 

literally leaping, from Latin salire, to spring ; and 
the analogy of the German language shows us a lite- 
ral translation of the Latin term in the expression 
of lierausspringender Wink el (outleaping angle) for 
a projecting or salient angle. Bnt the use of the 
word in the sense of assailable — as, for instance, 
■when we say ' a salient point in his argument was 
so-and-so ' — has no such justification, if we mean 
to say that such a point was weak and vulnerable. 
An angle may jut out, a mere point cannot ; and 
the fact is, that in such an expression we are 
using, without knowing it, a medical metaphor to 
express a vital and so a vulnerable point. The 
expression 'punctum saliens,' in its proper use, 
signifies ' a throbbing, pulsating spot,' such as the 
heart in an embryo, in strict accordance with which 
sense we are familiar with the phrase c a bounding 
pulse.' Thus the original meaning of the term, 
which now seems quite neglected, is that of a vital 
point in the sense of importance, not of vulner- 
ability ; so that, to be accurate, the salient point of 
an argument, so far from signifying its weakness, 
should imply its essential strength, — the very 
thing which proves its life, instead of that which 
exposes it to destruction. 

Multitudes, again, speak of a person aiming 
' point-blank ' at an object, without entertaining 
or conveying the slightest idea of a laborious and 



PRIMITIVE MEAXIX&S OF ENGLISH WO BBS. 87 

minute calculation. Yet the origin of the word 
aim (Lat. ces-t-imo, estimate) implies the compu- 
tation of a money value, and from first signifying 
a counting of cost has come to mean the prelimin- 
ary steps of an actual calculation. Point-blank, 
again, is an artillerist's metaphor (I use the word 
artillerist in its general sense, as referring to the 
whole science of projectiles), and owes its origin 
as a distinctive term to the almost instinctive ap- 
preciation of the nature of a parabola. These days 
of rifle -shooting have made every one familiar 
with the fact that the farther a projectile is to be 
carried, the higher angle with the plane of the 
horizon must be made by the weapon from which 
it is projected. This angle is, of course, scienti- 
fically speaking, a matter of exact calculation, and 
a certain degree of elevation must be given to a 
weapon intended to carry any considerable dis- 
tance ; but where the distance is very short this 
degree of elevation becomes absolutely incalcu- 
lable; and while the elevation for long shots is 
spoken of as reaching some certain point of the 
quadrant, whether an angle of one, five, or ten, a 
shot directly straight can have no index of eleva- 
tion, and its deviation from the plane of the 
horizon being practically nothing, the word poinU 
blank accurately and formally expresses its direc- 
tion. 



88 WOBD GOSSIP. 

The two senses in which we use the word engross 
spring from two different uses of the same French 
term. The root is that of Latin crassus, thick, 
and Teutonic grosz, great (the interchangeability 
of which is remarkable in the German phrase 
Crassdummheit, gross stupidity). The scrivening 
sense of the word engross is now almost entirely 
limited to writing on parchment, as distinguished 
from writing on paper ; the distinction being, 
however, an altogether arbitrary one, probably 
arising from the greater amount of flourishing and 
penmanship expended on a parchment calculated 
to last for ages than on the more perishable sub- 
stance of paper. 

The initial and leading words were written in 
old deeds in very large and highly ornamented 
characters, which required in many places to be 
rather painted than written with ink, in order to 
make the strokes sufficiently thick. Naturally 
such writing would be called thick (French gros) 
for distinction's sake, and the act of doing so re- 
ceived the name of engrossing. Another explana- 
tion of how it came specially to mean parchment- 
writing may be found in the fact, that while the 
body of a deed may be written by any clerk, the 
large initials, the letters strictly en gros, in the thick 
style, are generally executed by a person who 
makes such work his special occupation. 



PRIMITIVE MEANINGS OF ENGLISH WOEJDS. 89 

But our expression to engross, in the sense of 
monopolizing and usurping, conies from another 
meaning of the French phrase ; for en gros signifies 
wholesale as opposed to retail, and thus has given 
a metaphorical signification for the act of buying 
up or collecting anything firstly in extensive, and 
then in unreasonable proportion. 

The verb to repair, in the sense of movement, has 
almost totally lost its distinctive force ; and the 
confusion of its use may give us a warning against 
supplanting good, sensible, unequivocal English 
words by ill-comprehended importations. By 
saying, for instance, ' Luther repaired to Borne, ' 
instead of ' Luther went (or journeyed) to 
Borne,' we commit a blunder, sanctioned perhaps 
by prescription, but none the less on that ac- 
count a blunder; for to repair means to return 
home ; Lat. repatriare, lit., to go bach to one's father- 
land ; and the French term of chase which gives 
repaire as meaning the den of a wild animal, imply- 
ing thus a settled abode, conveys the exact idea of 
the original. Thus, by a slight stretch of the figure, 
a regiment may be said to repair to its barracks, a 
king to his palace, a courtier to court (supposing 
him able to feel really at home there) ; but no one 
who values the fitness of words would feel justified 
in saying that ' a regiment, a king, or a courtier 
repaired to a review.' 



90 WOBD GOSSIP. 



CHAPTER VII. 

ON SLIPSHOD ENGLISH CAUSED BY FAULTY STYLE. 

The days are rapidly passing away in which no one 
travelled half a dozen miles in a railway carriage 
without some fellow-passenger informing him that 
6 steam was a wonderful thing ; ' so also are those 
clays departing in which, if any of us underwent 
threepenn'orth of an omnibus journey, we were 
sure to meet some otherwise worthy lady, standing, 
or rather sitting, on her dignity, disparaging the 
vehicle whilst enjoying its convenience, and giving 
the general public to understand that she was quite 
unaccustomed to this sort of thing, and, in fact, was 
only making a mere trial trip, positively for the 
first and last time. Custom and habit have much 
to answer for in sending as they have so large a 
class of our fellow-mortals off the earth, and leaving 
human nature shorn of one of its many distinguish- 
ing traits. But this is but a trifling accusation to 
bring against our time of rapid locomotion and 



ON SLIPSHOD ENGLISH. 91 

lio-htniiig- swift intercommunication of ideas. Rail- 
ways, telegraphs, and penny postage, if they have 
not changed human nature in its essence, have 
changed it in its exercise, and peopled the universe 
with fast men in at least one sense of the term. As 
different ages have had different names, of gold, of 
bronze, of iron, may we not call our own the age 
of mercury ? And, in the leisure- devouring, time- 
filling race of life we are all running at our highest 
pressure, may we not, as it were, put our head for 
a moment now and then out of the window of our 
express train, even at the risk of losing breath in 
the proceeding, and take a rapid glance at the 
scenery we leave so quickly before it have quite 
faded from our sight? In such a view we catch 
here and there a glimpse of some charming land- 
scape we might like to see again, — a sight grateful 
to the eye in passing, and pleasant to the memory 
when past, if life would give us leisure for remem- 
brance ; and we may here and there have the swift 
conviction flashed upon our minds, that though we 
live so much faster in our modern times, and cram 
such multitudinous experiences into our short 
span as would have been impossible fifty years 
ago, all is not sheer gain and profit, and that some 
good things must be given up to leave our hands 
at liberty for laying hold on others which we may 
consider better worthy of our grasp. 



92 WORD GOSSIP. 

The railway lias its infinite advantages — speed, 
comfort, security (for a fair- sized man who avoids 
falling asleep opposite a possible Miiller), and an 
average punctuality to which the best of coach- 
ing could make no pretensions ; it has its winter 
shelter, its spring cushions, and its foot-warmers ; 
and it saves time, — how much ! and often of how 
great importance ! But can its charms be com- 
pared by a man of leisure, on a sweet June day, 
to sitting on a coach behind (say) old spectacled 
Falkner and a tidy team, on that noble Ports- 
mouth road which runs through so beautiful a 
country between Godalming and Peters field ? Can 
the lover of the picturesque be as happy dashing 
from side to side of his padded cage, to catch a 
glimpse through the engine's smoke or circling 
steam at - pretty bits ' which pass him like the 
changes in a kaleidoscope, as in printing on his 
retina the ineffaceable pictures of beauty, which 
he can mark and measure in excited ease as the 
coach performs its furlong to the mail train's mile ? 
And if the coach be pleasanter for sight, what 
must it be for sound ? In the train, the roar of 
the engine, the scream of the whistle, the thump 
of the piston, the jar of the ill-closed ' points,' 
drive patient listeners to hypocritical pretence of 
comprehension, while the effort of the persistent 
talker results before lono* in an acute attack of 



ON SLIPSHOD ENGLISH. 93 

' dysphonia clericorum.' But what do we hear on 
the coach ? The road is dry but .still elastic ; the 
dawn showers have laid the dust without provok- 
ing the mud ; a pheasant now and then whirrs off 
from the grass siding, and spins down the Devil's 
Punch-bowl to her nest in that perennial public- 
house that needs no licence ; the wheels mur- 
mur rather than rumble, humming a softo voce 
bass accompaniment to the music all around. The 
coachman's cheery chirp, seldom varied by the 
whistle of his whipcord, makes the gay cattle 
dance and shake the jingling chains of trace and 
splinter-bar. On they go, straight as a line, their 
fine summer coats, dressed like satin, shining in 
the sun, the corded veins streaking their arched 
necks, and the team as evenly together as corypJiees 
in a ballet ; they seem to make no effort as they 
tread lightly on the sweet heath-scented air, and 
to keep a merry trampling time to the pleasant 
music, — not with the heavy labouring plod of the 
underbred hoof, but as if their pleasure was to 
click gay castanets beneath their springy pasterns ; 
and all at once comes the blast of the guard's 
horn and — wakes me from my dream. They are 
gone, ay, literally ' to the dogs.' The silky skins 
were tanned ten years ago. The active limbs have 
hung raw and horrible on the branches of the oak 
beside the kennel, till piece by piece they found 



94 WORD GOSSIP. 

their last way into the hounds' broth ; the mail 
degenerated to a stage, for the railways robbed it 
of its bags and red-coated guards ; the thorough- 
breds yielded to their destiny, and hung their 
heads as poor ' old stagers ; ' the harness rotted, 
snapped, met rough-and-ready mending with twine 
and whipcord, and ' went ' at every buckle-hole, 
and then went altogether, — where ? I suppose into 
the boot of the coach, when that rolled off the 
road for ever, destined no more to look for paint 
and varnish on the king's birthday, but, bare and 
weather-beaten, to stand on two wheels and three 
quarters in the paddock behind the inn yard, its 
ragged linings dropping down from day to day, and 
the privileges of an inside seat only disputed night 
after night by the opposing parties of the turkey 
and the pea-fowl. 

And telegraphs, again, how convenient ! how 
miraculous ! How much more business can be 
managed ! how much more money can be made ! 
how much more time can be utilized ! But then 
how utterly they skim the cream of news, leaving 
the poor skim-milk of ' further particulars ' vapid 
and unstimulating as the second volume of a novel 
to the greedy reader, who has anticipated the 
denouement of the story by reading the last chapter 
of the third ! 

Or take, again, the penny postage. It has its 



ON SLIPSHOD ENGLISH. 95 

marvellous conveniences, and saves such quantities 
of time ; but how much more it gives us to do ! 
The year before its introduction the Post Office 
carried seventy-five millions of letters ; last year, 
1000 millions, so that (putting samples aside) on 
an average we each write ten letters now for one 
we used to do. We have more time, but must do 
more within it ; we find greater facilities for com- 
munication, bat must communicate more. And 
so we have had to shorten our epistles but to 
multiply their number. And this brings us, as 
gossiping does not always do, to our special pro- 
per subject, slipshod English ; for penny postage 
has destroyed the elegant art of letter- writing, as 
fast stipple-punching has destroyed the beautiful, 
laborious art of line engraving. The trick of speed 
has spoilt the habit of accuracy, and social history 
now-a-days is but chronicled in notes where it used 
to be detailed in letters. In the old days a letter 
was a work of art, a studied composition, a 
chronicle of news, an elaborate petition, or an 
urgent counsel ; the note, its substitute, is now a 
hasty scratch, a written ejaculation, a cry, or a 
command. Our fathers used to draught their 
letters first, read them over to themselves aloud, 
checking oif each smoothly balanced period with 
a waving pen, and, where need appeared, making 
erasures here and there with the blade of the pen- 



96 WOBD GOSSIP. 

knife, whose smooth reverted handle rubbed away 
the roughness of the scratched surface to pave the 
way for the more choice expression of their critical 
idea. Now, if he read his letters before posting, 
no man corrects his wording save by a hasty 
blotch and impatient interlineation, if even this 
be not left undone with the murmured ' Do well 
enough, he'll understand what I mean.' And this 
careless habit has spread also into literature, as 
who can wonder when we think of the greedy 
urgency of the steam press in journalism, and 
of the astounding fruitfulness of our greatest 
writers in general literature ? It is to a few lapses 
in such matters, as illustrating one of the dis- 
advantages of our modern rapid system, that I 
purpose now to draw attention, and to consider a 
few errors in style appearing in modern literature 
— not in any spirit of hypercriticism, but as speci- 
mens of a tendency which, if permitted, is not 
unlikely to spread farther. 

Here, for instance, to begin with, is a passage 
from one of our most distinguished living his- 
torians, which nothing but haste of habit could 
have allowed to remain unaltered : — 

' Elizabeth, from a mixture of motives, . . . 
hesitated to adopt and would not reject the means 
which were pressed upon her for preserving her 
throne, and she laid, with napping sails, drifting 
in the gale.' 



ON SLIPSHOD ENGLISH. 97 

Of course, the marvellous confusion of metaphor 
here must strike anyone who quietly analyzes 
the passage and its meaning ; although what the 
author intended to convey — the vacillation of 
Elizabeth at one particular crisis — is entirely un- 
mistakeable. She is represented as unwilling to 
use certain remedies for certain evils, but not as 
being hopelessly and helplessly abandoned to evil 
circumstances. Yet no ship can drift in a gale, 
and at the same time have her sails flapping, unless 
she have become quite unmanageable ; nor can she, 
under such circumstances, when she must be scud- 
ding under bare poles, be properly described as lying 
at all. But apart from the confusion of metaphor, 
which I shall consider in my next chapter, the 
special example of slipshod to be found in this 
quotation is the verbal one exhibited by the use of 
the word laid instead of lay. If this were a single 
instance in our literature the faulty expression 
would be scarcely worthy of critical notice ; but the 
error, at least in conversation, is a very common 
one, and at the rate whereby perversions spread, 
might soon be defended as correct, and even esta- 
blished as classical, on the testimony of the very 
instance I have quoted. 

Here is a slip from the ' Guardian ' of March 25, 
1868, extracted from a critical notice of Traill's 
Translation of Josephus : — 

H 



98 WOBD GOSSIP. 

4 The translation itself is in good and readable 
English, and disj)laces at once the queer and cum- 
brous work of Whiston, crotchety as in opinion, so 
in his English also.' 

Surely our language is flexible enough to dis- 
pense with the necessity of using such a structure 
of sentence as that italicized ; while the adverbial 
redundancy is absolutely unpleasant. It reminds 
me of a verse of a song I once heard sung by an 
ancient cricketer, and received with uproarious 
applause by his auditors. It seemed like a sum- 
moning up of the ghosts of the dead old time, to 
hear him quaver out a ballad made on the victory 
of Vittoria fifty years before, but which his rustic 
auditory evidently regarded as a passage from 
contemporary history. The following is the verse 
that specially took my fancy: — 

1 Two thousand (!) heavy guns besides 
Likewise they took also ; 
Which caused poor Joseph Bonypart 
To cry aloud, Morblo ! ' 

Here, again, is a curious specimen of involved 
and indefinite diction, from the same paper and 
of the same date. The extract is entirely un- 
abridged : — 

' It is a perfect puzzle even to educated men, 
either literally to carry out the arrangement, or if 
they did, to divine its result, where, as e.g., in 



ON SLIPSHOD EXGLISH. 99 

some colleges, two are to be elected by absolute 
majorities, from whom an external authority is 
to choose the actual Principal. The matter, we 
apprehend, is in such cases invariably arranged 
beforehand, and the minorities agree to give up 
their own men. How Mr. Hare can possibly dream 
of his own infinitely more complicated plan of 
" quotas," and of sifting out candidates, and of 
alternative lists, and the like, doing anything but 
turn all electors giddy with confusion of brain, it 
passes us to imagine. On this point, at least, a 
pamphlet written against his scheme by R. C, 
" On the Representation of Minorities" is conclusive 
in its criticisms.' 

Perhaps the best comment to be made on this 
most extraordinary passage is to say, with special 
reference to the words i giddy with confusion of 
brain,' ' Expertus loquitur.' 

Here is a bit from the ' Telegraph,' June 25, 
1866, exhibiting a very general sort of error which 
writers and speakers alike should be careful to 
guard against: — 'Retaining' the colour of their 
uniform, they have replaced an ugly shako by one 
altogether as smart and soldier-like.' 

' As smart and soldier-like ' as what ? We must 

presume an ellipsis, and that the writer meant to 

say ' as smart and soldier-like as the former shako 

was ugly,' but the necessity for such presumption 

h2 



100 WOED GOSSIP. 

should be guarded against. And as this structure 
cf sentence errs by deficiency, I will balance it by 
a specimen equally faulty, but erring by excess. 
It is the ill-sounding form, which seems daily to 
become more general in use, of saying, for in- 
stance, ' She is equally as amiable as her sister.' 
' She ' may be rightly said to be ' equally amiable 
with her sister,' or 'as amiable as her sister,' but 
4 equally as amiable as her sister ' is surely a most 
clumsy pleonastic unpleasantness. 

Here is even, to my mind, a worse form of this 
awkward structure. It is from the ' Times ' of 
April 10, 1868 referring to the Austrian Govern- 
ment : — ' It (the Government) entertains the 
highest regard for religious liberty, and would at 
all times be ready to afford powerful support to 
the authority of the Church ; but equally as the 
Government has no intention of passing beyond 
the limits of State authority, just as little can it 
assist in this being done by others.' 

In giving exact references of these various in- 
stances I adduce I must not be supposed desirous 
of ' running a muck ' against a number of generally 
well- written and well-edited newspapers and peri- 
odicals, since the very fact of my extracting from 
them is a proof of the appreciation which, makes 
me read them. I have assigned the occurrence of 
such lapses as I point out to the haste necessary 



OX SLIPSHOD EXGLISH. 101 

in providing intelligence of all sorts for tlie hungry 
readers of the present day, and though it be right 
here and there to point out errors as a matter of 
warning, it would be ungracious at the same time 
not to express the wonder which any reflecting 
man must experience in seeing how few and far 
between such errors are in the acres of literature 
which issue almost daily from the press. The 
hospital surgeon, as he points out to the students 
who accompany him on his visiting rounds the 
peculiar features of each case that meets his view, 
does not mean to sneer at the patients whose ail- 
ments supply material for his lecturing. On the 
contrary, while sympathizing with their sufferings, 
he cannot but feel at times a sort of undefined 
gratitude to the person whose condition supplies 
him with any peculiar points of interest to study 
and remark upon. And so, in fact, I view the few 
specimens of literary lapses which I am bringing 
forward. 

The following is also a common but an inaccurate 
phrase, ' I do not doubt but what he will come.' 
Many readers will exclaim at once that this is a 
mere vulgarism, but it has made its appearance 
already in unexpected places, and been heard from 
highly educated speakers. 

The present seems also a fitting opportunity to 
vent a snarl against the common use of the word 



102 WOBD GOSSIP. 

i wert* for l wast? We find it everywhere, in 
novels and in newspapers, in poetry and in prose ; 
and it certainly betrays one of the results of modern 
neglect of grammar. The greatest writers are 
not free from the error, who would yet feel in- 
dignant enough if supposed not to know the dif- 
ference between the indicative and subjunctive 
moods. 

Men are apt (at least, those who have not studied 
the subject) to take for granted that our earlier 
literature is uncouth and clumsy, and that its 
forms are a mere fortuitous medley, without rule 
or strict inflexion, but yet our earlier literature 
shows no confusion between the words wast and 
wert such as the present age displays ; the Bible 
has the word vjert only twice, both times in a sub- 
junctive sense, always using ivast in the indicative ; 
and yet modern writers who would flush into a 
perspiration many a time at the thought of having 
made such an error in a Latin quotation, do not 
hesitate to publish its equivalent in English time 
after time. It is useless to excuse this as sanc- 
tioned by usage unless we should say that those 
who know best the grammar of their native tongue 
are bound to adopt and follow the errors which 
originate in the ignorance of those who truly know 
nothing on the subject. A man may be a good 
poet and a bad grammarian, and to say that • thou 



ON SLIPSHOD ENGLISH. 103 

wert there ' instead of ' thou wast there/ is to be 
right because Tennyson or anyone else has written 
it, would compel us henceforth to adopt such a 
monstrous verb as ' to wist ' into our lanarnasre, 
because it has been used in a very beautiful poem 
which lately appeared in one of our magazines : — 

1 He wandered back 
Slowly, like one obedient to a power 
Whereof he wists not, to the home where once 
He had believed in love, and, as he deemed, 
In heaven.' 

Another piece of slipshod which is very rapidly 
gaining ground, and which should be guarded 
against by all who can value the explicitness of 
our language, is that shown in the use of the words 
either for any, and neither for none. Both either 
and neither in their very form express an alterna- 
tive ; their proper correlatives are or and nor ; and 
it is a gross, but unhappily also a growing error 
to apply them to cases of general, and not of 
simple alternative selection. Thus, for instance, a 
phrase like the following is so common as almost 
to attract no notice, — 'The three sisters are all 
beautiful, but neither of them can be called accom- 
plished.' Though the case be not entirely in point, 
it is sufficiently so to illustrate my position if I 
say that a similar error, and one obvious to the 
most careless ear, would exist in the expression, 



104 WORD GOSSIP, 

'Of the twenty recruits who were measured he 
was found the less (or worse still, the lesser) in 
stature.' We have the right words, which I have 
given above, to apply in connection with the either 
and neither ; why then should we give them up, 
only to deprive ouselves of the special explicitness 
which the genius of our language has provided for 
the necessities of those who speak it ? If we push 
this practice to its extreme we shall more clearly 
perceive its error. Our careless writers have 
hardly ventured beyond using either and neither as 
implying one of three instead of one of two, but 
if this practice should obtain, there is no logical 
or philological reason against the expressions, 
' Neither of the two hundred and fifty cases in the 
hospital recovered ; ' ' See whether either of the 
ship's company be on board.' This last instance 
could only be correct in such a case as that of the 
fisherman in a smack, who keeping the look-out 
while his only comrade slept, and requiring Lis 
assistance, shouted to arouse him, 'All hands on 
deck ! Come up, both of us ! ' 

A very common and very gross error is to be 
met with in the expression, which has turned up 
in my reading at least half a dozen times, c an in- 
numerable number.' 

But this is too bad a lapse for a good writer 
who pretends to any sort of care in preparing his 



ON SLIPSHOD ENGLISH. 10<5 

copy. Tlie following specimens, however, are 
taken from authors whose merits are deservedly 
great and proportionally acknowledged. 

Here are two from one of our best and most 
popular writers, who has written sketches of re- 
presentative clergy : — ' He is always in a state of 
feud . . . against the Pope, who to him is 
a ravenous old woman, as to whom he cannot 
say whether lie is most ravenous or most old- 
womanish.' 

Apart from the peculiar uncertainty of gender 
which certainly would if strictly taken represent 
his Holiness as epicene, we have here an illustra- 
tion of an error the exact converse of ' either of 
the three,' namely, ' most (instead of more) of the 
two.' 

Here is another sentence, also involved in diction 
and faulty in grammar : — ' The independence of an 
archbishop, and indeed to a very great though 
lesser extent of a bishop.' 

Tet there is not much to be said against the 
implied error in the use of the word lesser. It is, 
after all, but an intensified comparative, no more 
to be censured than the scriptural epithet ' Most 
Highest,' and we find a sufficient warrant for it 
also in the first chapter of Genesis, where we read 
that ' God made two great lights, . . . the 
lesser light to rule the night.' 



106 WOED GOSSIP. 

Here is another slip from an interesting article 
in the excellent ' Contemporary Review, ' by a peer 
distinguished as a scholar : — f We hardly think 
the established usage deserves quite the condign 
censure which he bestows upon it.' Now the 
meaning of the word ' condign ' is exactly that 
which is deserved, neither more nor less ; there can 
be no degrees whatever of condignity ; and there- 
fore the censure is neither condign if not deserved 
nor exactly deserved if not condign. 

The next instance I have noted is from that 
delightful writer, Washington Irving, and from 
one of his most delightful writings, ' Rip Van 
Winkle : '— 

' His son Rip . . . was generally seen troop- 
ing like a colt at his mother's heels.' The word 
troop), though of disputed etymology, implies a 
multitude in every case ; whether we assign it with 
some to the Latin turoa, a crowd ; with others to 
the Gaelic drooh, a drove (equivalent to the A.S. 
drdf, from drifan, to drive) ; or even to the old High 
German drupo (modern trauhe), a hunch of grapes, 
all imply a number of individuals ; and this the 
colt in his own person could no more represent 
than Rip Yan Winkle himself clinging to his 
mother's apron strings, on any other principle than 
that of the Irish soldier, who on bringing in three 
prisoners after battle, explained the feat to his 



ON SLIPSHOD ENGLISH. 107 

enquiring captain by the simple statement, ' Sure, 
your honour, I surrounded them.' 

I will close this section with a few newspaper 
instances. Here is one describing an unhappy 
accident : — 

' A fatal accident to three of our countrymen is 
reported by the Swiss papers. Two young English 

ladies with their mother left in a carriage for 

. The horse took fright at a very dangerous 

part of the road, and precipitated the ladies over a 
precipice. The ladies were killed.' — Pall Mall 
Gazette, July 11, 1866. 

Apart from the making the poor ladies out to 
be our countrymen, which possibly some readers, 
in these days of ' woman's rights,' will consider 
scarcely an error in description, to precipitate over 
a precipice, however literally accurate, is certainly 
a very slipshod expression. 

But these errors of carelessness sometimes can 
be very startling. Witness the following extract 
from the 'Newcastle Chronicle.' 

' Supposed Attempted Murder by a Wife. — At 
Coatharn, near Newcastle, on Tuesday, a man 
named Michael Biggins was found dead in bed 
with his throat cut. Mr. Locke, surgeon, of Coat- 
ham, was immediately called in, and — under his 
treatment — the man is now progressing favourably 
towards recovery ! ! ' 



108 WOBB GOSSIP. 

Here is one more from the ' Pall Mall ' of 
September 12, last: 

1 A political demonstration which (says our cor- 
respondent) revives the memory of former Con- 
naught elections, has taken place in the county of 
Mayo, in favour of the candidature of Mr. G. H. 
Moore. About one thousand men entered Castle- 
bar, each supplied with a shillelah, and headed by 
a band.'' 

If, as we gather, there were a thousand bands 
of music present, while we pity the ears of Mr. G. 
H. Moore, we can fully credit the further state- 
ment that he was ' accompanied by an enormous 
number of supporters.' 

Advertisements supply us sometimes with mar- 
vellous specimens of slipshod, which yet pass con- 
stantly undetected. We have all heard of the man 
who can be easily seen through, as being one who 
has a pane in his chest and his back, aud to hear 
that a nian 4 wears his heart upon his sleeve"' is 
not altogether beyond experience, but the degree 
of general openness implied in the two following 
advertisements introduces us to a condition of 
anatomy which we might fancy neither lady nor 
curate could long endure and live : — 

' Furnished Lodgings. — A lady is open to hear 
of the above.' 

4 To Free and Open Curates. — Any such may 



ON SLIPSHOD ENGLISH, 109 

hear of a desirable sphere of duty by applying to 

,' &c, &c. 

Of course our sex would be badly off indeed in 
its prospects if no lady were or should be ' open to 
an offer,' but this is a very different thing from 
being ' open to hear of the above.' And, again, we 
require some little special training to understand 
what ' free and open curates ' are ; free and easy 
ones we may have now and then made acquaint- 
ance with, but they are gentlemen few would 
advertise for ; and open cannot here mean open- 
handed, since unhappily the possibility of being so 
is denied to most of our curates by the shameful 
scantiness of their stipends ; but we may at least- 
divine its meaning when we learn that a society 
exists for supplanting the pew system and pro- 
moting ' free and open ' worship in churches, and 
conclude that the sort of curate advertised for is 
one who entertains the views upheld by that 
society. 



no WORD GOSSIP. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ON SLIPSHOD ENGLISH CAUSED BY CONFUSION 
OF METAPHOR. 

Confusion of metaphor is to blame for very many 
instances of slipshod English. I have already, in 
a former chapter, pointed ont the inaccuracy of the 
expression 'to tell a story,' while pointing out the 
fitness of saying, c to tell a tale.' A similar speci- 
men of slipshod is afforded by the expression, ' to 
take one's departure.' Of course this phrase is now 
so thoroughly naturalized, that none can fail to 
comprehend it ; but it is nevertheless a corruption 
of the accurate form, 'to take one's leave,' which, 
in its turn, is an elliptical expression for ' to take 
one's leave to depart.' We have not to go very far 
back into the history of European nations to see the 
fitness of the expression. Time was, and in Russia 
still is, that subjects were only permitted to leave 
their country by special permission from the repre- 
sentatives of the sovereign ; and we can find in- 



CONFUSION OF METAPHOR. Ill 

stances in our early literature to illustrate the use 
of the expression of its extended and complete form. 
Such, an instance we find in the romance of ' Sir 
Lainbewell,' one of those beautiful old poems which 
have been restored to our literature by the recent 
printing of Bishop Percy's folio manuscript, — to 
the merits of which undertaking I gladly take this 
opportunity of directing my reader's attention. 
When Sir Lambewell's inexorable lady-love, reject- 
ing her lover's entreaties, determines on leaving 
him, the author of the poem says, — 

1 For that they saw he made such mone 
The king and they prayed every one; 
But for all that ever he could do 
Not a word she would speak him to, 
But obeyed her (did obeisance) to the king so hend, 
And tooke her leave away to wend? 

(Apropos, let us gossip a moment on a slipshod 
perversion of this last verb, 'to wend.' 'To wend 
one's way,' is a perfectly correct expression ; but 
the stilted style of novel- writing, now happily upon 
the wane, exhibits many instances of the inaccurate 
form, ' he wended his way,' caused by the writer's 
ignorance of the fact that ' went,' which we use as 
the irregular preterite of the verb 'to go,' is in 
fact the regular preterite of the verb ' to wend.') 

But to continue our specimens of slipshod 
caused by confusion of metaphor. The following 



112 WORD GOSSIP. 

is extracted from the ' Illustrated London News ' 
of October, 1866, containing an obituary notice of 
a famous steeplechase rider : — ' When he (James 
Mason) ivoii his spurs, a steeplechase field were 
only shown their line in the distance,' &c. 

.Apart from the marvellous parsing necessary to 
make good sense of the latter clause in this sen- 
tence, we find the chivalric mataphor of i winning 
spurs,' equivalent to 'gaining distinction,' most 
curiously misplaced here. If a steeplechase rider, 
under any conditions of the sport, had had no 
spurs, he could never have reached distinction in 
his profession. And while on the subject of riding 
I may give another kindred instance, taken this 
time from the ' Cornhill Magazine' for July 1866. 
In an interesting paper on horsekeeping we are 
told that ' the buyer (of a horse) may find himself 
saddled with a worthless animal !!' — a very painful 
condition indeed, to which my reading can find no 
parallel except in the state of the old gentleman in 
' ^Esop's Fables,' who, in trying to please every- 
body, actually undertook to carry his own donkey. 

Of course abundant illustrations are to ba found 
of this error, which, from their absurdity, hold 
their ground as stock anecdotes, and can recur to 
the minds of many of my readers. One or two, 
quoted by Mr. Jeaffreson— ii his Book about 
Lawyers — as having emanated from Lord Kenyon, 



CONFUSION OF METAPHOR. 113 

are excellent in their way. ' If,' said his lordship, 
1 an individual can break down the safeguards 
which the constitution has wisely and cautiously 
erected, by poisoning the niinds of the jury at a 
time when they are called upon to decide, he will 
stab the administration of justice in its most vital 
part.' And yet if we examine this supposed cap- 
ital instance, we must admit that the speaker was 
guilty of no real confusion of metaphor at all. He 
erred not in the fitness, but in the superfluity of 
his figures. In a single sentence he made use of 
three metaphors, the sound of which is undoubtedly 
perplexing, but the sense of which remains clear 
because each metaphor used was complete in it- 
self. But the same defence cannot be offered for 
the other instance I shall quote, which is indeed 
too amusing to need any sort of apology. In 
sentencing a butler convicted of stealing his 
master's wine, he thus described the culprit's con- 
duct : — 'Dead to every claim of natural affection, 
and blind to your own interest, you burst through 
all the restraints of religion and morality, and 
have for many years been feathering your nest with 
your master's bottles.'' 

This, of course, is a comical instance ; but at 

the risk of appearing vexatiously hypercritical, I 

shall point to one or two occurring in the writings 

of great and favourite poets. Here is one which 

I 



114 WORD GOSSIP, 

I am almost afraid to find fault with, occurring as 
it does in one of the very grandest passages 
Campbell ever wrote : — 

' Hope for a season bade the world farewell.' 

Of course the meaning is that Hope abandoned the 
world ; and the almost universal use of the ex- 
pression c to bid farewell ' — as synonymous with 
'to depart ' — suggested the poet's expression. 
But if we come to examine the line more closely 
we shall see that Hope, in bidding the world fare 
well, was actually giving it encouragement — lead- 
ing it to expect some better things. If any other 
personified quality than hope had been represented 
in its place, there would not have been the same 
literal unfitness of expression, which exhibits thus 
an instance — if strictly taken — of metaphorical 
confusion. 

But I let this instance pass, as knowing that 
very few will agree with me in finding any fault 
in the passage. I will turn to Byron, who may 
afford us an instance or two from the ' Hebrew 
Melodies :' — ■ 

* There, — where Thy finger scorched the tablet stone, 
There, — where Thy shadow to Thy people shone' 

Many of my readers must have dreamed at times 
that they were either reciting from memory, or 



CONFUSION OF METAPHOB. 115 

improvising poetry, or even prose, of the most 
touching and eloquent description ; I have awak- 
ened sometimes in my young days (or my young 
nights, to be accurate, for this fault-finding gossip 
may make some readers glad to catch me tripping) 
- — I have awakened, I say, from sleep, with my 
eyes wet with weeping, moved by the imagined 
beauty of lines I found myself repeating or invent- 
ing, and, keeping with an effort the sound of one 
or two before my mind, have discovered that they 
formed but an unconnected tissue of independent 
words, rhythmical in structure, but simply nonsen- 
sical and absurd. I know not how far this may be 
the experience of others as to their sleeping poesy, 
but I am inclined to think that the same false idea 
prevails with many in less extravagant form even 
in their daily reading. And it is this habit of 
letting poetry pass scarcely noted through the 
brain, if it have succeeded in escaping challenge 
by the ear, which allows the error in such a pass- 
age as I have quoted to escape detection. Shadow 
can never shine ; the idea is subversive of the first 
principles of optics ; and, within a page or two of 
the same part of Byron's work, ' The Hebrew 
Melodies,' we find a curious complement of this 
oversight. In the piece entitled ' Saul,' — descrip- 
tive of the summoning of Samuel by the witch 
of Endor — a piece exhibiting in its very short 
i2 



116 WOEJD GOSSIP. 

compass points of remarkable poetic merit — we 
find the following two lines, which we never yet- 
found anyone to challenge : — 

1 Earth yawned ; he stood the centre of a cloud : 
Light changed its hue, retiring from his shroud.' 

If light retired from his shroud, of course the 
shroud and the person it enveloped became in- 
visible, which is anything but what the poet meant 
to say ; though making Samuel stand ' the centre 
of a cloud ' seems to imply it also ; yet the great 
majority of readers, struck with the subject and 
Byron's graphic treatment, will read the short 
poem through and fancy they have fully under- 
stood it, though the two lines I have quoted really 
express the actual contrary of what the writer 
meant, and of what they understood him to mean. 
We have a curious parallel to this error in 
Victor Hugo's beautiful poem commencing 

* Dans yos hivers, riches, heureux du monde.' 

And containing the following lines : — 

1 Peutetre un malheureux, dans ces carrefours sombrec, 
S'arrete et voit danser vos lumineuses ombres 
Aux vitres du salon dore.' 



n; 



CHAPTER IX. 

ON PECULIARITIES OF WORDS KINDRED IN MEANING. 

We occasionally meet "with a couple of words, 
each, conveying, if not the same, at least a modifi- 
cation of the same idea, bearing some such striking 
resemblance to each other as to interest our 
passing attention, and leading us to feel that, had 
we time, had we patience, had w r e some sufficient 
preparatory acquaintance with, the subject, we 
might, trace out some still stronger resemblance, 
and thread with, pleasure some attractive labyrinth 
of investigation. We meet such a notion in our 
conversation, or our reading; and as we hear or 
read, we often feel we should like to make a collec- 
tion of such matters ; time and the slight trouble 
of noting down the points as they occur would be 
sure to accumulate proof of the accuracy of our 
views, or their error, as the case might be, and 
materials thus gathered from hour to hour might be 
distilled to sweetness, rectified by experience, and 



118 WORD GOSSIP. 

stored away, if only for our own private consump- 
tion in the pleasant form of a nectar of knowledge. 
But unfortunately men do not generally read 
with a pencil in their pocket, or rather in their 
hand ; nor do they patronise the plan of jotting 
down their daily notions as Pecksniff professed to 
do his nightly dreams. One book of reference, 
indeed, almost all the human race seems to indent 
with pencil-marks — the Royal Academy Cata- 
logues. All ' round about and in and out ' the 
exhibition-rooms the mighty crowd of honest 
critics who ' know what they like themselves ' 
(and generally nothing further) wield busily 
amidst the surging crowd the pencil of apprecia- 
tion. See (if you will, through my eyes, which saw 
them as it were but yesterday) that pretty girl 
with tearful glance putting down emphatic crosses, 
(as if playing at the noble game of tit-tat-to), 
against O'JSTeil's 'Night before Waterloo,' and 
there again that ' languid swell ' in conchological 
pantaloons, (how else shall we call them, for they 
make his legs look like razor shells?) actually 
marking the numbers which meet his approval 
with a great new carpenter's pencil, which he can 
only have smuggled in as a walkingstick, since 
there is not a pocket about his person in which he 
could insert it without danger of starting a seam. 
These are single types of a class whose name is 



WORDS KINDRED IN MEANING. 1 1 9 

legion. They go home and talk a little abont the 
pictures, come once or twice more, till the stitches 
of their marked catalogue crack with its frequent 
crumplings, and the interesting work itself becom- 
ing absolutely shabby is consigned to the purga- 
tory of the waste paper basket, or the Gehenna of 
firelighting. Such markings after all are but of 
little use. But if it were as general for men and 
women not merely to keep their eyes open, but by 
means of paper and pencil to provide a sort of 
mental store-room for points of interest that strike 
them in their reading day by day, they would be 
astonished at how much enjoyment and enlighten- 
ment they might be preparing for themselves. 

Apropos of astonishment, let us take, as a simple 
instance worth noting, the class of words sig- 
nifying the effect of sudden surprise, and see how 
every one of them are connected together with a 
fundamental idea which we can only express by 
a metaphorical reference to thunder. How often 
most people say they are ' astonished ' without 
thinking of its metaphorical meaning ; and how 
much more forcibly they express their sunrise m 
saying they are c thunderstruck,' while they use 
the very same word (which in yet another form 
they employ chiefly in a physical sense) when they 
speak of a person being stunned by a fall. Astound- 
ed is only another form of the same word, and 



120 WORD GOSSIP. 

yet we have in fact a different meaning in applying 
each of these words thongh they all express the 
same original idea ; while if we want really to say 
that a person hasbeen literally astonished, astounded, 
thunderstruck, or stunned, we are obliged to use a 
periphrasis by saying, ' he ivas struck by lightning,' 
so completely has the literal meaning been ousted 
by the figurative. 

If we look a little further into the analogies of 
this class of words, we shall find them running, as 
so many do, through a whole cycle of languages. 
Just to cite the tongues with which most persons 
of ordinary education in the present day are 
familiar, we find the very same point illustrated. 
We have in Latin aitonitus ; in French etonne (in 
its older form still nearer to the Teutonic cognates, 
estonne) and in German erstaunt, all expressing 
the same idea, while in the modern instances, the 
French and German, as in the English, another 
word has to be found to express the literal idea, and 
we findfoudroye in the one and verdonnert in the 
other, both continually used in a figurative sense as 
well. We may also note in passing, that our lan- 
guage, in the exercise of its right to make arbitrary 
distinctions where those who use it will not adhere 
to proper analogies, seems to have nearly established 
a difference between the two forms thunderstruck 
and thunder stricken, using the latter to express the 



WORDS KINDRED IN MEANING. 121 

actual sense of Masting, which the former, now mean- 
ing only great surprise, is no longer able to convey. 

The fact of this usurpation of the literal to a 
figurative meaning occurring in so many languages 
naturally leads us to ash ourselves for some reason 
why it should be so. In the nature of things 
blasting by lightning must have always been a 
most exceptional event ; one so very rare as to 
occur, if to the knowledge, at least not in the sight 
of one man in a millirn ; moreover, that a person 
should be so stricken and yet recover must have 
been an occurrence still more exceptional ; the use, 
therefore, of the word at first must have been 
almost as extravagant as the Irishman's expression 
for being hurt, ' I'm kilt intirely,' and we can only 
attribute its reception to the habit of exaggeration 
which seems natural and almost necessary to 
human speech, and which, so far from finding fault 
with, we are generally as little apfc to be conscious 
of as we are to consider what greater exaggerations 
must exist in the outlines of an ordinary map. 
This tendency to exaggeration I purpose illustrat- 
ing further when we come to gossip on the subject 
of expletives. 

Let us now turn to another string of words, 
whose connection with each other most people are 
in some sort familiar with ; I mean the names of 
measures of length, taken from the human body. 



122 WOBD GOSSIP. 

We may begin with the hair's breadth, and thence 
run through the names of nail, inch, palm, hand, 
span, foot, cubit (or ell), pace, and even fathom. It 
may be well to show the reasonableness of assign- 
ing the less obvious of these terms (namely, inch, 
span, ell, and fathom) to measures of the human 
body. Inch in the first place. This we have from 
the Latin nncia, signifying firstly an inch, the 
twelfth part of a foot, thence an ounce, the twelfth 
part of a pound, and finally, the twelfth part of 
anything whatever. Now this word is commonly 
referred to a Greek form ovyKta, a further origin 
for which in that language we may seek in vain ; 
^IpAMuller calls it Sicilian and Etruscan ; but 
there seems to me good reason for assigning it a 
Latin birth, since by so doing we can find for it an 
intelligible etymology. And here in passing let 
me say how important it is not to allow ourselves to 
be nose-led by dictionary-makers, who necessarily 
must copy to some extent from one another. If we 
want really to get to the ' root ' of a matter (above 
all things important in etymology), let us make a 
point of sifting evidences, and not be too ready to 
take matters for granted. We find this precious 
ovy da adopted by authorities as generally trust- 
worthy as Scheler* and Messrs. White and Riddle ;f 

* Dictionnaire d'Etymologie Franchise, 1862. 
t Latin English Dictionary, 1866. 



WOBDS KINDRED IN MEANING. 123 

and its acceptance, of course, would make the use 
of the word inch an exception to what the anology 
of other words of measure leads us to look for, a 
reference to some part of the body. It is, therefore, 
satisfactory, on turning to worthy old Schrevelius 
for a history of oi/y/a'a, to find him simply dismiss 
it thus : c ovyKia, uncia. Vox Latina? Thus we 
may speak in English of a man in Paris spending 
a thousand francs, but we should think it hard for 
that reason to be obliged to say the French word 
franc was derived from the English adopted word. 
QhyKia may therefore be dismissed from our minds 
altogether, and we may start fair for some other 
origin of the term uncia, and this I should refer to 
the root of uncus, a hook or bend, as signifying the 
top joint of the thumb. 

~No doubt there are many of my readers ready 
to cry out at such a far-fetched idea, and to say 
that on the same principle any one word may be 
derived from any other. But let us examine it a 
little further. What is the French word for an 
inch ? Pouce, which also means a thumb. What 
is the derivation of pouce ? The Latin poll ex, a 
thumb ; used sometimes in the sense of mea- 
suring.* And how is length to be measured by the 
thumb, especially a length representing about an 

* Compare our housekeeper's expression for measuring ap- 
proximately, * by rule of thumb.' 



124 WOBD GOSSIP. 

inch., except by bending the tlmmb and measuring 
its top joint along the matter to be calculated ? 
In connection with this I would note how all onr 
terms for measures taken from parts of the body 
not actually self- denned, as hand, palm, foot, &c, 
apply not to the rigid, but to the flexed posture. 
Cubit refers to the length from the bended elbow 
on which one reclines. Ell, the Latin ulna, to the 
name given to the large bone of the arm, from the 
same point which the Germans call f Ellenbogen'' 
and we ' Ell-bow,'' the bend * where the ell begins ; 
face to the oppositely bended position of the hip- 
joints, span to the oppositely bended joints of the 
thumb and wrist. 

Bat doubtless my readers may say of me, ' Give 
this fellow an inch, and he will take an ell,' if I 
plague them longer about this one particular word ; 
I dismiss it, therefore, with remarking that the 
use of the word span incidentally does away with 
one objection to my referring, as I have done, a 
bend in general to a bend of the thumb in particular. 
To span is to stretch, a sptan, any stretch whatever, 
and yet, in the absence of any distincter definition 
of the thing to which it is applied, we accept the 
general term as the measure of a stretched hand 
without any sort of hesitation. 

We now come to show the corporeal measure 
* Compare the shape and sound of the letter L. 



WOBDS KINDBEB IN MEANING. 125 

implied by the use of the term fathom. It signifies, 
as we all know, a measure of six feet, and is now 
limited as a substantive to a nautical sense. We 
find the German of this word to be Faden, the 
general term for a string or thread. We can see 
a striking analogy between the German and Eng- 
lish in the expression JSin Faden Holz, a cord of 
ivood ; but yet the words Faden and fathom both 
refer primarily not to a thread or cord which bind 
things together, but really to the space grasped 
by the outstretched arms. Of this we find the 
following convincing proofs ; in the Old Saxon 
(Heliand, 90, 19) we have the form fadhom, signi- 
fying the arm, while Rask quotes the Anglo-Saxon 
Fcethm, in the sense of an embrace, and Bjorn 
Haldorson (in his Icelandic Dictionary) gives 
Faden as equivalent to the outstretched arms. If 
we want a conclusive analogy from a Romanic 
language we have but to look to the French 
equivalent for our nautical fathom, which we find 
to be brasse, from bras the arm ; and if further we 
seek a reason why this measure should be named 
rather from the outstretched arms than from the 
stature of a man (these being generally of about 
the same length) ; we can but point out that the 
very act of measuring one's oWn length (except in 
the involuntary sense) would be performed with 
the arms rather than with the body. 



126 WORD GOSSIP. 

Let us now turn to a class of words which have 
made themselves indispensable in our language, 
and will all, if closely examined, be found referable 
to a single idea, that of divination by signs in the 
sky, either of stars or of birds. I mean the words 
italicised in the following sentence : ' I should 
consider any enterprise undertaken under his aus- 
pices ill-starred and likely to end in disaster, and 
should augur most unfavourably for its success, if 
entrusted in an evil hour to one of such sinister 
aspect and abominable character.' Of course, 
most of my readers only require to have their 
attention drawn to this fact to find its accuracy 
obvious ; but there may here and there be one for 
whose benefit I must give a few words of ex- 
planation, even at the risk of proving tiresome to 
the better informed. 

Of these italicised words, then, which we may re- 
mark to be every one of Romanic origin, auspices, 
augur, sinister, in evil hour, and abominable, refer to 
the ancient system of presaging, not events them- 
selves, but the probability of their proving favour- 
able, from watching the flight of birds. In Rome 
there was an actual college of augurs whose busi- 
ness was not restricted to divination by watching 
of birds alone, as that of the auspices strictly was, 
but who had also to declare and interpret omens 
from other things such as thunder, lightning. &c. 



WORDS KINDRED IN MEANING. 127 

By degrees, however, the augur and auspex seem to 
have become united in the same idea, though that 
some distinction existed between their functions ap- 
pears from the following quotation from Ennius : — 

' Dant operam simul auspicio attguriisque.' 

We use the word auspices in a very incorrect sense, 
which the Latin by no means supports. The word 
is the plural form of auspex (a diviner of the flight 
of birds) ; the expression, then, \ under his auspices J 
would imply that the person spoken of employed a 
number of such diviners. The proper form would 
be 'under him as an auspex,' that is, ' at his insti- 
gation.' A familiar quotation or two will show this 
plainly ; for instance, the following, for which see 
Horace, or any Latin grammar or Delectus : 

1 Nil desperandum est Teucro, duce et auspice Teucro.' 

and this from Yirgil : 

1 Diis auspicious cceptorum operum ; ' 

literally, ' the Gods being auspices of the works 
begun.' 

The augurs were consulted before entering on 
any undertaking, whence we have the expression 
to inaugurate a building, an enterprise, &c. ; and so 
important was the presence of some one of sooth- 
sayer kind, that at a marriage the c best man,' or 



128 WOBD GOSSIP, 

6 7rapavv jjifpiog^ was called the ' nuptiarum auspex.' 
The best man now-a-days has rather different 
functions, his special business being to 'return 
thanks ' for the bridesmaids, and to be to them a 
soothsayer, as a matter of course, of all sorts of 
favourable things. S mister means unfavourable, 
because a portent, from which the augur or auspex 
drew his prophecy or omen (declaration), if seen 
on the left side, was unfavourable. To abominate 
means strictly 'to deprecate an omen,' a thino- 
constantly done in Latin by using the words ' absit 
omen ; ' and having its equivalent still in Roman 
Catholic countries in the form of crossing one's 
self on hearing or seeing anything terrible, or in 
such ejaculations constantly used by the Irish 
peasantry, as 'The saints be about us,' ' God be be- 
tween us and harm,' &c. 

The expression ' in a good (or evil) hour,' though 
perhaps wrongly attributed to astrological use, 
conveys exactly the same idea, and is a form of 
abomination, or of deprecating an omen. To seem 
to make a boast of anything not actually due to 
our own powers or merits almost invariably gives 
the impression that the ground of boasting may be 
taken away ; so, for instance, if a man say, ' I have 
admirable health ; I have never had a day's illness ; \ 
one almost immediately feels inclined to say, ' In a 
good hour be it spoken.' For this the Latins would 



WOEDS KINDRED IN MEANING. 129 

have said something like, ' Quod faustum felixque 
sit,' and the Germans would say 'unberufen,' that 
is, 'not called for,' meaning 'may this not invoke 
ill health upon yon.' The French have the very 
same idiom as ours, though they have come to apply 
it by way of encouragement, and no longer as a 
deprecation of evil. 

Thus, if you relate to a Frenchman anything 
satisfactory to yourself or to him, he will say ' A la 
bonne heure ! ' much as we should say, ' Bravo, 
capital, well done ! ' That this form of expression, 
both in French and English, should be generally, 
and with some show of reason, assigned to an 
astrological source, arises from a very natural con- 
fusion of the two superstitions, augury and astro- 
logy, such as has caused the Old- French words, 
boneur, maleur, to be spelt with an interpolated 7i, 
as honheiur, mallieur. The astrologist drew a 
horoscope for a new-born child, from which the idea 
naturally came that the horoscope being favourable 
the child was well-houred, and should be happy 
(heureux), or have happiness (honheur). But then 
we see that no one ever attempted to spell bonheur 
as lonneheure, which would have been the consist- 
ent course on such a supposition. So we must look 
for another origin, which lies nearer, and is to be 
found in the Provencal, oMr, syncopated from augur, 
augurium. So the Provencal has bonailr (good 
K 



130 WOBB GOSSIP. 

augury) and malaur (evil augury), for happiness 
and misery, and the Old-French had almost the 
identical form, as I have already shown. Thus our 
saying ' in a good hour be it spoken,' truly means 
' be it spoken under a good augury,' and is equiva- 
lent to the Latin form of ' abominating ' or depre- 
cating evil — c absit omen.' # 

We may note further, as analogous to the French 
• good luck ' expressing happiness, that the very 
word 7iap-piness implies the idea of chance, as well 
as the German equivalent, which is Glii%ch, and 
that the French word for luck itself is ' chance.'* 

I proceed to note the other terms drawn from 
astrology proper. Let us consider first the very 
word consider. It is derived from the Latin con, 
with, and sidus (pi. sidera) , a star, and has reached 
its present use from the study of the relative po- 
sitions of stars to each other under astrological 
observation. By the way, as I have had occasion 
to note already in the case of other words, we come 
sometimes with unconscious and instinctive accu- 
racy to use these old forgotten metaphors with 
singular fitness. Of this we can have no better 
illustration than the use of this word consider in 
the eighth Psalm — When I consider Thy heavens, 
the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stats, 
which Thou hast ordained.' 
* Contracted from cheance, a falling ; compare ' casting of lots.' 



WOBDS KINDBED IN MEANING. 131 

Of course, I need hardly explain the meaning of 
the words disaster or ill-starred, after this indica- 
tion of their astrological nse. The expression ' in 
the ascendant ' is also self-interpreting ; but it will 
occur to few persons to note that our common 
word aspect is used also in an astrological meta- 
phor. The expression 'to view,' or 'to present a 
thing under a favourable aspect,' proves this to be 
so ; the figure becoming a different one when we 
are said to regard a thing in various aspects. 

The original connection of singing and dancing 
has supplied us with a number of words taken 
from the latter proceeding to express the former, 
or vice versa, much in the same way as we find 
professors of one art, for want of better words, 
using the terms of another to express the merits of 
their own. How fond the musical critics are, for 
instance, of characterising a performance as ' des- 
titute of light and shade,' while a fantasia is desig- 
nated as brilliant, or a comic song as flashy ; so 
the Germans use the word Color atur for a musical 
embellishment, and we even hear the heroic meta- 
phor of ' a composition of sober complexion ;' the 
sister art returning the compliment by speaking of 
one colour harmonizing or according with another, 
of the tone of a picture, on the toning of a photo- 
graph ; whilst the irrepressible slang which has 
favoured us with a flashy song can counterbalance 
k2 



132 WOBD GOSSIP. 

it with tlie appropriate description of a loud waist- 
coat. 

Even thus singing and dancing have adopted 
the same words, which for our convenience we 
have slightly varied, keeping ball for a social 
dance, ballet for a theatrical one, and ballad for a 
song. It is beside my present purpose to go into 
the exact derivation of the Italian ballare,* a 
dance, from whence these terms descend, though 
I cannot help noting how badly off people can be 
sometimes for a root, when we find Wackernagel 
deriving it from the fact that in the Middle Ages 
as well as among the Greeks the game of ball 
was played with accompaniments of music and 
dancing ! It is unquestionable that singing natur- 
ally accompanied dancing, and that, in turn, 
amongst the bards forcible action was used to 
illustrate song, so that there is nothing more sur- 
prising in our calling a piece of lively descriptive 
verse by a name signifying a dance than in our 
calling a piece of music a waltz or a polka. The 
analogy goes still further, for we find the words 
chorus and choir, which we only apply to singing, 
taken from the Greek x°i°^> which properly means 

* It probably comes from the Rom. balla, a ball, from re- 
ference to its shape, as giving the idea of circulation. 
Hesychms makes the Greek word x°P° s > a dance, equivalent 
to kvkAos, a circle. 



WORDS KINDRED IN MEANING. 133 

a dance. Thus, it might be etymologically accu- 
rate, though productive of dire confusion, to call 
the ' ladies of the chorus ' ' ladies of the ballet,' and 
the absurdity of Box in the farce calling on Cox to 
sing a chorus, might have its linguistic justification. 

We may carry this analogy further still by 
noting that the word jig, which now only means a 
sort of dance, used to be applied to pieces of poetry 
of the ballad sort. Thus it occurs in Hamlet 
(Act II. Sc. 2.) ; and a specimen is given in the 
newly printed Percy Folio MS. (vol. ii. pp. 334 
seqq.) under the title ' A Jigge.' A reference also 
to some of the earlier translations of the Bible 
will show us l The Ballad of Ballads ' printed for 
'The Song of Songs.' 

It will add one to former illustrations of the 
manner in which our language, if retaining at all 
two real synonyms, takes care to assign to them 
distinct offices, if I note how marked a difference 
we make in our use of the two words chorus and 
choir, the latter being now almost exclusively ap- 
plied to ecclesiastical singers. This is one of the 
great advantages which our language derives from 
the fact of its admixture of many elements, and 
goes far to compensate us for the want of that 
marvellous plasticity which enables the Germans 
to form words at will out of the elements of their 
own language to fit and define any shade of idea. 



134 WOBD GOSSIP. 

Indeed, we may even go further, and say that our 
tongne has actually waived the privilege of manu- 
facturing compounds because it can provide equiva- 
lents for them by a judicious use in varied forms 
and various senses of the words it takes from 
other tongues. Of course, Finger-hut and Hand- 
schuli {finger-hat and hand-shoe') are words which 
are not merely signs but definitions of what they 
signify, but if we had not the simpler and shorter 
thimble * and glove, we might use the compounds 
ourselves with as good reason as we speak of a, jam- 
pot or a cork-screw. And in the instance before us, 
chorus and choir, we are actually better off than 
either our French or German neighbours, who 
have only the word in its single form choeur or chor, 
to signify any body of singers whatever. 

There is this remarkable peculiarity to be noticed 
in the whole class of words by which we refer to 
something to be done after a short interval of time, 
that the expressions all in their strict sense ignore 
the implied interval altogether. If we want a 
thing done by a person engaged in something 
else, we get for answer ' I will do it presently, 
immediately, directly, anon ; ' now every one of these 
words properly mean on the spot, without any 
delay whatever ; but common usage has so altered 
their signification that not one of them bears the 
* Der. from thumb, on which tailors still wear the thimble. 



WOBJDS KINDRED IN MEANING. 135 

sense of what should be their equivalent, now ; on 
the contrary, they all imply such a qualification 
as is implied in the expression ' just now.' This 
variation of sense is of the same sort but not so 
extreme as that which really brings a word or a 
sentence at times to signify the very contrary of 
what its sound implies. As an instance of a word 
doing this, I may cite synonym, which properly 
means a word of exactly the same meaning as 
another, a sense we retain in the adjective form 
unchanged, when we speak of one expression being 
synonymous with another ; but when we talk of a 
book of synonyms we mean really a book which 
points out the differences, often immense in detail, 
between words whose resemblance is possibly of 
a very limited nature. We can, again, have no 
better instance of a sentence being universally 
used in a way entirely contrary to its meaning 
than the common one of ' he speaks through his 
nose ; ' for it is just when the nose is held, or the 
nostrils obstructed, so that neither sound nor air 
can pass through, that the nasal twang is pro- 
duced which we describe in terms so diametrically 
opposed to fact. 

The charlatan (literally chatterer, whose title we 
have well translated by the onomatopoetic word 
quack) may illustrate by means of his servant's 
functions a numerous class of words, such as 



136 WORD GOSSIP. 

Merr y- Andrew, Jack Pudding, Hans-Wurst, Zany, 
Toadeater, and Buffoon. The first-named explains 
itself ; Jack Pudding is a literal translation of the 
German Hans-Wurst, the pudding in either case 
referring to the sausages, or the pretended saus- 
ages which the Merry- Andrew always appeared to 
be swallowing by the yard or fathom ; Zany 
(Zanni) is but the Italian for Jack, being abbre- 
viated for Giovanni, just as Hans is the termina- 
tion Hannes of Johannes. Toadeater had its early 
signification also from the horrible things which 
the quack's familiar pretended to swallow. Just- 
in proportion as the quack laid claim to super- 
natural wisdom was his servant required to pre- 
tend to supernatural silliness ; well trained in his 
profession, and being, of course, far more knave 
than fool, his duty was to show most obsequious 
reverence to his master, and never to hesitate a 
moment in obeying his most extravagant com- 
mands. At the same time, to collect the crowd 
his master was to cure, and to keep them together 
when collected, he was obliged entirely to forfeit 
every claim he might have ever laid to native 
dignity and the respect of his fellow-men. A 
similar motive, often attended with a similar re- 
sult, makes the term toadeater fitly apply to a 
servile flatterer. This same trick of pretending to 
eat reptiles, such as toads, has been held by some 



WORDS KINDRED IN MEANING. 137 

as the origin also of the term buffoon, buffoonery, 
from the Latin bufo, a toad. I give the notion here 
for so much as it is worth, at the same time ob- 
serving that it is a disputed point of etymology 
into which, for many reasons, it would be unprofit- 
able for us to enter at present. 

Before the old infantry musket be so totally 
forgotten in these days of weapons of precision as 
that its very name of ' Brown Bess ' be lost to 
meaning and to memory, it may be allowed me to 
record the origin of its appellation. The brown is 
merely an alliterative epithet, the Bess being 
equivalent to the German Biichse, applied to a 
rifle, a box ; the French buse, a tube ; the Flemish 
bids. We see its use still in the words blunder Zmss 
(properly thunder-buss) and arquebuss, &c. 



138 WOBB GOSSIP. 



CHAPTER X. 

ON SOME CURIOUS ANALOGIES OF DERIVATION. 

The fact that, whether noted or not, the immense 
majority of our sentences are figurative rather than 
literal, will naturally account for the extraordinary 
similarity to be found in the figurative forms and 
expressions of many languages. Some of these 
instances, and in fact a great many, arise from 
the necessity of the case, the same idea in various 
tongues obtaining the same expression ; but many, 
on the other hand, are simply literal translations 
from one language to another, or from some older 
source into two or more modern languages. Some 
are children by blood, and some children by adop- 
tion ; but tney are many more in number than we 
are at all apt to observe. For example of the first 
I may adduce a common instance. The verb to 
read means also either directly, or in some very 
slight modification, to choose, or gather, in Greek, 
Latin, German, and French. Greek Xtyiu, Latin 



CURIOUS ANALOGIES OF DERIVATION. 139 

lego, French lire (elire, to choose, elect), German 
lesen (aus-lesen, to choose). Even in English we 
find the same word in almost universal provincial 
use ; namely, in the dialectic expression to lease, 
signifying to glean. This similarity can of course 
only arise from a common origin, of which it 
forms an illustration as effective in its way, as so- 
called irregularity of form does in the instances 
which all the five languages I refer to exhibit of 
having no regular positive equivalent to ' good,' 
for the comparatives tetter and best. The Greek 
ayadog, the Latin bonus, the French bon, the 
German gut, the English good, have no structural 
amnities whatever with their respective compara- 
tives and superlatives. Another such peculiarity, 
noteworthy in languages so distinct as German and 
Latin, namely, that the word signifying ' he eats ' 
is the same as that signifying ' he exists,' may 
give an instance, on the other hand, of analogy by 
necessity, both languages, either in themselves or 
their ancestors, thus showing the early acceptance 
of the axiom that food is essential to life. 

But the analogies I purpose briefly alluding to 
in this chapter are not so obvious as these, and I 
merely put them forth as curiosities, not as de- 
pending upon, or suggestive of, any structural 
theories whatever. 
■ The first I notice gives us an instance of trans- 



140 WOBD GOSSIP. 

lation from one language to another, and suggests 
also the fact of some sort of tradition being lost 
which gave the term its origin. I mean our name 
Woodroof for the plant asperula odorata. Webster's 
(the only dictionary in which I find any attempt 
to explain the derivation of the term) simply 
refers it to ivood, and ruff or roof, which, as far as 
meaning goes, only amounts to telling us what 
we know already, that the word consists of two 
syllables ; and yet a few lines above he has given 
the real origin of the word under ' wood-reeve, 
the steward or overseer of a wood.' Of conrse, 
reeve is a word familiar to all readers of the Robin 
Hood ballads or Sir Walter Scott's novels ; it is 
derived from the Anglo-Saxon gerefa, and is thus 
equivalent to the German Graf, a count, and sig- 
nifies ' one in authority.' We have the expres- 
sion still in the word sheriff (shire-reeve), whose 
business to the present day is to put the king's 
writ in execution. But what bears on our present 
subject in the matter is, that we find the German 
name of the same plant to have a precisely similar 
meaning, its form being Waldmeister, the master 
of the wood. 

A somewhat similar analogy is to be found in 
the German word for a wren, of which we have 
happily retained the legend though our term is 
not equivalent. In Ireland, as in England, St. 



CURIOUS ANALOGIES OF DERIVATION. 141 

Stephen's day is that of a massacre of the innocents 
in the hedgerows, probably m celebration of the 
fact that the saint was stoned to death, a method 
the most universally used against the birds on a 
day generally observed as a holiday, and spent as 
many holidays are, in a woful effort to get over 
the time. On that day every old gun, musket, 
pistol, ay petronel, and arquebus, if such things 
still exist, is taken down from the hook, and the 
whole country vibrates with perpetual detonations. 
But still there are more idle boys than ancient 
guns, and many have to do their yearly sporting 
with the only weapon they can find, and pelt 
sparrows, wrens, and robins all the day long with 
stones and pebbles. Now these sportsmen com- 
bine the looking for Christmas boxes with their 
sport, and pass from house to house begging for 
contributions, calling themselves ' the wren-boys.' 
They sing a sort of charter song, much^in the same 
way as Christmas mummers, and to the following 
effect, though my memory does not serve me as to 
the ' ipsissima verba : ' — 

' The wran, the wran, the king of all birds, 
St. Stephen's day was caught in the furze, 
Come give us a bumper, or give us a cake, 
Or give us a copper for Charity's sake.' 

Now this very idea of the wren, one of the smallest, 
being called the king of all, birds, finds a striking 



142 WORD GOSSIP. 

analogy in the fact that his German name is 
zaunlwnig, the hedge-king, and that his name in 
French is roitelet, the little king, and in Latin regulus, 
with the same meaning. The origin of this pecu- 
liarity of nomenclature was most probably the 
little yellow crest or crown on the head of that 
tribe of wrens, which we distinguish by the name 
of the ' gold-crest,' but the name itself no doubt 
suggested the well known legend of the birds 
agreeing to choose as king the one who should 
soar highest ; the eagle having overtopped all 
competitors, and having reached the highest point 
in his power, was ousted from the throne he had 
hoped to gain by a little wren, which, having shel- 
tered under his wing, was able to soar higher than 
himself and so to claim the crown he ever since 
has worn. 

Let us turn to another analogy for the elucida- 
tion of which we must have recourse for a moment 
to schoolboy slang. I mean that suggested by our 
word stuff. Now this, though in its original 
meaning, signifying i matter ' in general, we use 
contemptuously as characterising some tale or 
statement either absurd or incredible. In this 
sense the Germans use an equivalent, the word zeug 
and stoff, literally ' material for production ; ' 
and hence (as is also the case with our word 
stuff) signifying a texture of any kind. But they 



CUBIOUS ANALOGIES OF DERIVATION. 143 

prefix an adjective to it, ■ dummes zeug,' stupid 
stuff. What we should call ' twaddle ' they call 
also hram i a word properly applying to the multi- 
tudinous wares which a pedlar (kramer) carries 
in his wallet for sale. JSTow, in the sense of some- 
thing incredible or absurd the schoolboys call a 
statement a cram, and they even have the phrase to 
* stuff one up ' with a story in the sense of making- 
one believe a falsehood. Is it not then a striking 
analogy that the only legitimate use of the word 
cram in English should be to stuff full, as we 
speak of cramming a carpet bag, or to feed ex- 
cessively, as we speak of cramming fowls ? But 
we can carry the analogy still further. If we look 
for the French word to stuff (as fowls for table, 
&c), we find it farcir, and stuffing itself we find to 
be farce, the very word which we only use in a 
dramatic sense as applied to a ridiculous play. 

A similar analogy may be found in another 
couple of familiar expressions which we use to 
express contempt of something told us. I mean 
the semi- sanctioned^ cMZe-cZe-cZee / and the unquali- 
fied piece of slang, bosh ! Why on earth we 
should say fiddle-de-dee in the sense we do, I 
cannot undertake to explain ; but it is a singular 
coincidence that we also, when desirous to be more 
emphatic than elegant in expressing the same idea, 
use unconsciously as exact a synonym as if we 



144 WOBD GOSSIP. 

said, c Oh ! violin ! ' the word bosh being, in fact, 
the pure gipsy word for fiddle* 

We have another curious pair of words in 
different meanings ; beetle and calender, which may 
be worth a little observation. The process of 
preparing linen, now done in what is called a 
beetling mill, has always also been carried on, on 
a small scale, by pounding the linen with a sort of 
mallet, much like a cook's rolling-pin provided 
with a handle at the end, or still more closely re- 
sembling a brass roasting-jack turned upside down. 
This instrument goes by the name of a beetle ; and 
its most natural derivation is unquestionably the 
word to beat, exactly describing the use to which 
it is put. Where large quantities of linen had to 
be treated, another method was used for shorten- 
ing labour, and the mangle in its various forms was 
introduced. It became further necessary to glaze 
the linen by an extension of the process, and so the 
art of calendering was introduced, which required 
the use of cylinders filled with hot coals. Now 
nothing can be more reasonable than to suppose 
that the word calender came from cylinder, a deri- 

* Since writing the above, I have met the following as an 
editorial statement in the 'Public Opinion/ for October 31, 
1868 : — ' Perhaps the only word which we are undoubtedly (?) 
indebted to Turkish for, is the word bosh, which means 
empty in that language.' My kind readers must settle this 
point for themselves. 



C UBIO US ANAL GIES OF DERIVA TION. 1 4 5 

vation which, all the etymologists refer to, and 
some seem to have made up their minds upon ; yet 
it is curious to find that the word calendre in 
French, and Calendra in Spanish, is the name of a 
sort of beetle, and doubtless applied to that insect 
ages before anyone thought of supplanting the 
primitive hand-beetling of linen by machinery. It 
would be entering on a conjecture, the truth of 
which cannot be proved, to suggest that the 
general shape of the insect, the head representing 
the handle, and the body the thick, round part of 
the instrument, gave the name to one or other ; 
but it may be worth while to mention, as a sort of 
support of this conjecture, that the form of our 
word calender. or colander places certain difficulties 
in the way of derivation from the Greek mXtrSpoc 
I may end this chapter with another word and its 
analogies without bringing my readers too deeply 
into derivations. It is the word ' sleeper ' applied 
to the logs of timber on which railway metals are 
laid. We have the French sommier, signifying 
both a main beam in a building, on which most 
others rest, and a mattress, and analogous to this 
we have the French word sommeil for sleep. We 
find, again, the word Bressnmer, or Breststimmer 
in English, as implying much such a beam ; and 
it may be that from such analogy the word sleeper 
has been taken. It is, however, right to say that 
L 



146 WOBD GOSSIP. 

the word sommier, a beam, seems more reasonably 
referable to its other meaning, ' a beast of burden ' 
(as we say a sumpter- mule), and that the heavy 
beam takes its name from the burden it supports ; 
much as we also speak of a clothes- horse, a towel- 
Jwrse, while the French call such matters chevalet 
(cheval, a horse), and the Germans hock, a buck. 
A further investigation of this point gives us also 
a further analogy to reflect on ; the French word 
poutre, a beam, being derived from ijoultre, a colt. 



147 



CHAPTER XI. 

DIALECTIC EXPRESSIONS. 

There is no more striking proof of how little 
men think on the subject of language than the 
contemptuous manner in which most people talk of 
dialectic expressions, or the readiness with which 
these are classed as essentially vulgar and despic- 
able. Nothing betrays more complete ignorance 
of the nature and history of language than the 
ready condemnation, as equally barbarous and low, 
of every term and phrase which does not happen 
to form part of our ordinary literary language. 
For it shows that such classifiers are simply un- 
aware that the literary language of each nation is 
only one out of many which by some special favour 
and peculiar fortune has been adopted for general 
use in preference to its fellows. There is not a 
county in England, so to speak, which has not a 
language of its own, and frequently, too, an un- 
written grammar of its own, just as systematic and 
l 2 



148 WOBB GOSSIP. 

justifiable as the forms which Lindley Murray or 
any other exponent of our literary language may 
have endeavoured to fix and illustrate. Nor, while 
any living language remains, as it must, liable to 
continual change, casting its withered leaves and 
putting forth its green ones as autumn and spring- 
time follow in their courses, can anyone be justi- 
fied in calling its forms and idioms, however uni- 
versally adopted, either fixed or final. 

While our literary language has been growing 
age by age, forming new words, and by gradual 
change modifying, and even in some instances 
reversing the meaning of old ones, many other 
English languages, akin to it indeed, but in- 
dependent of it, have been passing through the 
same stages, with this marked difference, that 
want of literary use has prevented the succession 
of such stages from being noted, and has made 
the history of such dialects harder to trace than 
that of the tongue we use ourselves from day 
to day. The same thing occurs in every lan- 
guage we know anything about. The physical 
conformation of different tribes, different families, 
even of different individuals, affords a key to 
original divergencies of pronunciation at least ; 
but whatever the causes be, the fact is certain, that 
round about each literary language is grouped a 
multitude of different dialects, which are only con- 



DIALECTIC EXPRESSIONS 149 

temptible in so far as their use is limited and their 
peculiarities unstudied and undefined. 

The Latin language, at one time so widely 
spoken, was but that of one little district in Italy, 
and owed its wide acceptance to the gradual rise 
of the tribe who spoke it to become the rulers of 
the world. The French, again, was but the lan- 
guage of a few, who grew to be an overwhelming 
multitude, and is only the winner in a race for 
which there were many starters. 

Much the same thing may be said of the modern 
High German, which owes its final triumph over 
the Low to its having formed the vehicle for 
Luther's translation of the Bible ; and yet there 
are many evidences in the literary activity of the 
last hundred years, of how fully capable many a 
German dialect, however generally despised, can be 
of giving beautiful and apt expression to fine and 
touching thought. The 'Beetle' of the old Nu- 
remberg tinman, Griibel, the beautiful Alemannic 
poems of Hebel, Klaus Groth's admirable ' Quick- 
born' in theDitmarsch Piatt deutsch, Von Kobell's 
songs in the Tyrolese and Bavarian dialects, may 
show how thoroughly these varying forms of so- 
called vulgar speech can echo the heart-music of 
the poet born ; while their fitness for prose writing 
can be easily illustrated by reference to the charm- 
ing and original novels of Fritz Beuter in the 



150 WORD GOSSIP. 

Mecklenburgh dialect. The extent moreover to 
•which they are used in fugitive and little-noted 
literature will appear from the most cursory ex- 
amination of ' Deutschland's Volkerstimmen,' by 
Firmenieh, or Fromman's ' Deutsche Mundarten.' 
Something of the same kind may be found in 
Dr. Barnes's excellent productions in the Dorset- 
shire dialect ; and though it be indeed a Quixotic 
idea to suppose that any exercises in or illustra- 
tions of a special dialect could ever aim at sup- 
planting the established literary idiom, the proof 
is ready and convincing that the supposed vul- 
garity of dialectic language, per se, can only be 
evolved from ignorant and unthinking presump- 
tion. 

Dialects, as compared with literary languages, 
are like rough diamonds measured against bril- 
liants ; they are common pebbles to the million, 
possible treasures to the few ; or, to take a Cali- 
fornian illustration, they are the sands which 
thousands of feet have trodden with fatigue and 
weariness till some one skilled observant wayfarer 
has marked the long unnoticed signs which made 
him cry, ' These sands are sown w r ith gold.' 

I do not purpose entering here into any details 
as to the divisions and history of our dialects, but 
shall only call attention to some expressions 



DIALECTIC EXPRESSIONS. 151 

among them which may possibly amuse or interest 
my readers. 

The first I will note is an illustration of the un- 
conscious accuracy sometimes to be found in a 
dialectic expression. Meeting an old woman on 
her way to a fair shortly after hopping, a time when 
most of the hoppers put what the philologists would 
call the protective prefix s before their hopping 
and go shopping, I said, 'Well, Mrs. Trusler, off to 
town ? Going to spend your fortune, I suppose.' 
I got the answer, 'Ah, Sir, it's most all gone 
already ; I've bought me a jpegg, and I've paid up 
my rent, and I've settled my shop bill, and now I've 
only sixpence left, and I'm going to spend they/ 
Of course she should, to be perfectly accurate, have 
said to spend them ; but most educated people 
would have looked on the c sixpence ' as a noun of 
singular number, and have said, ' I'm going to 
spend thaV There is a reason of course to be found 
for this exceptional accuracy in the fact that pen- 
nies are individuals to the poor, while the rich are 
accustomed to regard them chiefly in a collective 
sense, but notwithstanding old Mrs. Trusler would 
have had the better of the strict grammatical argu- 
ment in favour of her form of speech. 

How deplorable many people think the ignorance 
which leads a countryman to say to a friend, ' Well, 
Jim, and how be you ? ' and to receive the answer, 



152 WOBD GOSSIP. 

i I "be very well, Tom, I thank' ee ; and kow's 
yourself ? ' And yet these two sentences are cor- 
rectly spoken, though not in the idiom we use in 
literature. These rustics, for the most part de- 
scended from ancestors innocent through ages of the 
alphabet, and uninfluenced by the changes which 
affect our written language, have simply in such 
expressions preserved, and that in a most won- 
derful way, the traditional utterances which have 
come to their ears from the Anglo-Saxon times. 
The Anglo-Saxon language has two distinct verbs, 
signifying to he, wesan and beon, the latter only 
occurring in the present tenses of the indicative 
and subjunctive moods. These tenses of each verb 
I subjoin, in defence of Jim and Tom's accuracy. 

Inf. -wesan, to be. Inf. beon, to be. 

Ind. Pres. eom, I am. Ind. Pres. beo. 

eart, thou art. byst (pron. beest). 

is (ys), he is. byd (pron. beed). 

synd (syndon), we, yon, they, beoth and beo. 
are. 
Subj. Pres. Sing, sy, I thou, he, may be. Subj. Pres. Sing. beo. 

Plur. syn, we, you, they, may be. „ PL beon. 

• 

From this my readers will see that while we have 
blended these two verbs together, using the forms 
of wesan for our indicative, and those of heon for our 
subjunctive, the uneducated classes have merely 
retained those of heon in both moods, and only 



DIALECTIC EXPRESSIONS. 153 

adopted tliose of wesan occasionally, probably in 
answer to persons addressing them in the more 
literary way. 

If we look to the analogy of the German lan- 
guage we find a curious converse from our English 
practice. They use the equivalent to beon in the 
indicative mood, ich bin, du bist ; and the equivalent 
to the wesan forms in the subjunctive, Icli set, du 
seiest, er sei. 

Thus we see that in finding fault with the rustic 
for using such sentences as I have given, we betray 
our own ignorance of the ground forms of our lan- 
guage, and that it is only the suitability to our own 
ears, not the grammatical accuracy of their speech, 
that we can have a word to say against. 

'But,' some stern critic may ejaculate, 'there is 
another part of the sentence you have given us 
which admits of no defence ; you make Jim answer 
Tom, and then enquire in return, " How's your- 
self?"' Yet, after all, is this not right? If we 
analyze the word your self, we shall see that it must 
be treated in the same way as ' Your Grace,' ' Your 
Lordship,' or ' Your Majesty ; ' and to say, ' How are 
your Grace ? ' or 'I hope your Majesty feel very 
well,' would be both an awkward utterance and 
an uncomfortable hearing. Jim or Tom, of course, 
think nothing of being right or wrong ; all they use 
their tongues for is to convey a meaning to each 



154 WOBD GOSSIP. 

other ; but yet in all unconsciousness they speak 
words correctly which many better taught than 
they would hastily condemn. 

Another instance of unconscious accuracy in a 
dialectic word, and, on the other hand of un- 
necessary correction of the same in our literary 
language, is to be found in the use of the word airy, 
so universal amongst servants to express what their 
masters are accustomed to designate by the term 
area, meaning the little forecourt of a town house. 
We find the word aere in German (but little used) 
in the sense of a vestibule. Its origin as given by 
Grimm makes it synonymous with the Latin area, 
a threshing-floor, because this was generally in 
front of the house ; * and we find the same word 
for a threshing-floor in the French aire, which 
justifies what we are apt to call the error of the 
lower class in talking of an airy. In fact, they have 
kept the word in its proximate French or German 
form, while we, unconscious of its use in those 
tongues, have gone back to its remoter origin for 
an explanation of its meaning. 

In one more point I am able to show the accuracy 
of dialect, namely, in the pronunciation of local 
names. Educated people for the most part lose 
sight of the true word-structure in pronouncing 

* Compare our word ' thresh-olfr* (in Early English 
' threxwolde ') and its cognates. 



DIALECTIC EA'PBESSIONS. 155 

the names of places ending in ham (home) pre- 
ceded by a t or an s. Two successive parishes of 
which I have had charge bear the respective 
names of Frensham and (North) Waltham. I 
think I may say that without exception the upper- 
classes pronounce these Frensh-am and Walth-am, 
while the lower orders as universally pronounce 
them Frens-ham and Walt-ham ; and the latter are 
unquestionably right, this division being the only 
one that conveys a meaning with the names. This 
accuracy is all the more striking when we remem- 
ber that the dialects of West Surrey and of North 
Hampshire, in which these places are situated, 
both almost totally neglect pronouncing the letter 
h at all. I have had from time to time the utmost 
difficulty in getting village school children in 
either place to produce the aspirate sound, so en- 
tirely is it excluded from their dialectic idiom ; in 
fact, I have frequently had to make a whole class 
breathe rapidly upon their slates before uttering 
the syllable to make them give the educated pro- 
nunciation to such a word as hat or head. 

This subject leads me to ask a startling question, 
namely, 'Who wrote " Cock Eobin "?' We all 
know, or ought to know, who killed him ; but if 
we could have any means of finding out that it was 
a Dorsetshire man who wrote his story, I for one 
should rejoice, as finding one of the critical diffi- 



156 WORD GOSSIP. 

culties of my earliest years removed, That heart- 
rending epic haying set the universe enquiring 
who should dig the grave of the murdered robin, 
replies, — 

' I, said the owl, 
With my spade and shovel 
I'll dig his grave.' 

But how are these first two lines to rhyme ? Every 
other corresponding couple in the poem rhyme : 
the sparrow has an arrow, the lark can be clerk, 
the bull can pull — or the bul can pul, as the case 
may be ; even the throosh may be made rhyme to 
bush, or the bussh to thrush, and sobbing may pass 
as an echo to robin, but we can't call the owl an 
ovel to make him rhyme with shovel, and so we 
have to do as I did when a little child myself, and 
say — 

4 1, says the owl, 
With my spade and showl 
I'll dig his grave.' 

]Now this very word showl is the Dorsetshire word 
for shovel, and keeps a vowel sound analogous to 
that occurring in its German equivalent, Schaufel, 
of which we keep the form in shovel, with a differ- 
ent pronunciation. 

The form of many dialectic expressions used by 
the rustics shows a striking analogy with those 



DIALECTIC EXPRESSIONS. 157 

# used in ordinary German, which, as most of my 
readers are probably aware, is a language capable 
of indefinite extension by means of simple juxta- 
position of terms. Thus my old parish clerk would 
speak of a couple whose banns had been published 
for the third time as being ' out-asked,' and of the 
chancel door being ' off-locked,' — forms which, 
though entirely dialectic in our language, would be 
perfectly natural and correct in German. But one 
of the most striking resemblances of this sort I 
have met is the expression ' to break up ' a letter, 
in the sense of opening. A country-woman com- 
plaining to me of harsh treatment which one of 
her daughters had met with in service, laid special 
stress upon the fact that the girl's mistress had 
' broken up ' a letter which arrived for the maid 
in the family post-bag, and seemed not quite sure 
whether this flagrant proceeding did not render 
the inquisitive lady liable to an ignominious death 
upon the gallows. 

Sometimes we find a dialectic expression very 
useful in guiding us to a derivation. The slang 
phrase ' dowse the glim' might puzzle many an 
enquirer to understand save by the context. I 
know it was of frequent use amongst the ' fellows ' 
when I was a little boy at school in Brussels. It 
signified ' put out the light,' and probably was 
introduced by some youngster who had read ' Jack 



168 WORD GOSSIP. 

Sheppard.' I seem to recall to mind the chief 
occasions when we used it. On Saturday nights 
in winter, we in the ' little dortoir ' (that is the 
dormitory of the youngest boys) used to sit for a 
couple of hours after our regular bedtime round a 
red-hot stove (no other dormitory had such a good 
one : we called it Fireball) . There we huddled to- 
gether in a hot ring, each with his lean little feet in 
a foot-bath, and each with a book upon his knee, so 
that, to any master coming in, we might appear in 
our long night-shirts a set of studious little angels, 
too good for the world we lived in. One held a 
Latin grammar, another the 'Jungfrau von Or- 
leans,' a third the ' Cours de Litterature,' a fourth a 
dog's eared dictionary ; for we were very good and 
studious little boys on Saturday nights. But if a 
master had entered and examined any one of those 
instructive volumes, he would have found them to 
contain more than was vouched for by the table of 
contents. In one part between the leaves he would 
have discovered some limp tiny cards, and in an- 
other a numismatic collection laid out flat, chiefly 
consisting of ' cents ' and five-centime pieces, and 
had he been able to put these curious facts together 
he would have found that ' the little dortoir' were 
playing ' speculation ' under pretence of washing 
their ' poor feet.' Though, however, we made all 
these preparations, they never could bear the test 



DIALECTIC EXPRESSIONS. 159 

of an interruption. A footstep in the corridor was 
enough, to cause a general and terrified whisper of 
' dowse the gliin,' and in an instant we were left 
with nothing visible in the room but the dull red 
stove and a circle of lurid ghosts around. How 
well I remember after one of those alarms when 
some of us were making believe to be drying 6ur 
feet with unnatural energy, how one backed up 
against old Fireball, smiting our souls by an awful 
shriek of pain, and arousing our indignation after- 
wards at finding that all the harm done him. was 
the disorganisation of a piece of epidermis the 
size of one of the five- centime pieces which fell 
spinning over the floor from the admirable volume 
he had been studying before his accident. With 
our feet wet, our hearts throbbing, and half the 
cards and coppers about the room, we rushed into 
bed as well as the darkness caused by the ' dowsed 
glim ' would permit us, and, marvellous to say, 
were not discovered by the shriek ; but we were 
frightened off from ' speculation ' for many a 
Saturday afterwards. 

But I hear some one cry, and not without some 
reason, ' Quo ruis impruclens vaga dicere facta ?' 
And, in truth, in stirring up a childish remem- 
brance of a quarter of a century old I have gossiped 
off very far from the derivation of the word 
' dowse.' It is from the dialectic verb dout, to do 



160 WORD GOSSIP. 

out, put out, formed in a similar way to the obso- 
lescent verb we still employ — to don, put on, and 
to doff, put off, a coat, bat, &c. 

Having done with dowse let us examine tbe word 
glim. It is of conrse a modification of the word 
glimmer, an uncertain light, and cognate with 
gleam, as verb and substantive ; but it gives us 
an opportunity of comparing the two words glance 
and glimpse, both of which signify a hasty survey. 
We find glimpse in the Alemannic dialect of Ger- 
man in the form chlimse, signifying a chink or 
crevice. Thus it occurs in Hebel's beautiful 
poem ' Verganglichkeit,' in the passage where the 
father is setting forth to his son the gradual course 
of decay that must at last overtake even their own 
dwelling : — 

1 lo wegerli, unci's Hues wird alt unci wiiest ; 
Der Eege wascht der's wiiester alii Nacht, 
Und d'Sunne bleicht der's schwarzer alii Nacht 
Und im Getafer popperet der Wurm. 
Es regnet no dur d'Biihne ab, es pfift 
Der Wind dur d'Chlimse.' 

1 Our home must yield to age and slow decay, 
The washing showers shall waste it night by night, 
The sunshine dim its brightness day by day, 
The worm shall burrow in the wainscoting, 
The rain shall drip at last from floor to floor, 
And the winds whistle through the crevices.' 

We may thus reasonably assign the word glimpse 



DIALECTIC EXPRESSIONS. 161 

to what may be seen in a rapid peep through a 
crevice, while the word glance, signifying some- 
thing shining, refers rather to the eye that sees, 
that flashes back a sort of reflection over the scene 
that meets it. This sense of glance we still retain 
exactly in the expression ' a glance of triumph,' 'a 
glance of affection ; ' and we may rightly say ' he 
glanced at his friend,' ' he saw it at a glance,' while 
i let me get a glance at the newspaper' would be a 
faulty expression. 

Let us next get dialectic usage to help us in cor- 
recting the commonly accepted spelling of the word 
curb in the sense of a framework round a well, or 
the edging-stone of a pavement. This should be, 
and occasionally is, spelt kerb, curb being only ac- 
curate in the literal and metaphorical sense of 
holding in or restraining a horse by making him 
bend his neck. 

If we ask a woodman to measure a felled tree, 
or even the short wood he has cut off in trimming 
it, he will say, ' It measures so and so, not count- 
ing the hurfV IsTow this 'kurf ' is the slanting 
part where the wood has been cut off, and is the 
same word as the German Jcerbe, the edge. The 
unchanged word is used in the same sense for the 
edge of a well, &c. (though the dictionaries make 
no reference to this analogy), and should con- 
sequently be similarly spelt ; but the collateral 
M 



162 WORD GOSSIP. 

idea of restraint has led to the error of making it 
identical with the Romanic word curb, a curve or 
bend, which is generally assigned as its origin, 
though a kerb or edging of a footway proper is 
generally without any curve whatever. 

We find a curious analogy in the North- country 
dialectic expression Jielder for rather — both mean- 
ing sooner. Most of my readers are aware that 
the word rather is the comparative of an obsolete 
word rathe, soon, early ; * helder (elder) is in its 
turn the comparative of old, and both terms in the 
sense of preference have their exact synonym in 
our word sooner. 

The words leer for hungry and clem for starva- 
tion may be simply explained by a reference to 
their German correlatives leer, empty, and Memmen, 
to pinch. JRooJc, again, is the same as the German 
word ranch, smoke, though I doubt whether most 
people in reading, for instance, the following 
couplet from Campbell's ' Lochiel,' — - 

1 A merciless sword o'er Culloden shall wave, — 
Culloden that reeks with the blood of the brave,' 

* ' This is he that I seyde of, after me is comun a man 
which was made before me, for he was rather than I.' Wick- 
liff's Trans. St. John, chap. i. (Note in this passage how 
before is made to denote precedence in rank, and rather 
priority in time.) Compare further our word puny (Ft. puisne, 
later born), with aine (avant-ne, born before) ; and its ap- 
plication in the expression ' a puisne (inferior) judge.' 



DIALECTIC EXPRESSIONS. 163 

quite understand that to reek means to smoke. 
Hooky bacon, again, is bacon which is black from 
having been hung in smoke, and a sweep is dia- 
lectically described as having 4 a rooky face.' May 
we not hence derive a more satisfactory explana- 
tion of the bird rook (A.S. hroc) from its colour, 
than the commonly accepted one which assigns it 
to mucus, from the hoarseness of its voice ? 

Sometimes we find a dialectic perversion prove 
an economy in language. For instance, the verb 
1 to hollo ' is a neuter verb, and we can only rightly 
speak of one man holloing to another. But the 
country-folk make it an active verb and save the 
preposition. Thus one night, in driving past a 
cottage where I wished to leave a message, I 
shouted to attract attention, and on the door 
being opened, was greeted by the enquiry, i Who's 
that hollerin' we ?' 

The mention of the word ' hollo ' calls to my 
mind some of the peculiar expressions used for 
leaving off work. In the north of Ireland the 
general term is ' quitting 'f time ; but the plough- 
men and carters, who have to do with horses, use 
a still more graphic and definite expression ; they 
call it ' lousing ' or ' loosing ' time, the time at which 

* Compare one of the many derivations (and by no means 
the worst one) of the word dinner — Fr. diner, disner ; Lat. 
desino, I leave off. 

m2 



164 WOBD GOSSIP. 

they loose their cattle from the yoke. Somewhat 
analogous to this, but less comprehensible without 
explanation, is the phrase among hop-pickers in 
the south of England. According to them five 
o'clock is called ' hollering- time,' the time when 
they cease from labour. ' Why do you call it hol- 
lering time ?' I asked a picker once. ' Why, 
Sir, they hollers " no more poles " at five,' was 
the reply ; signifying that the pole-pullers, who 
have to supply the pickers with poles, cease 
pLilling at that hour, and the picking must conse- 
quently come to an end when the poles already 
pulled are stripped of i heir hops. 

This far-fetched phrase reminds me to note an 
instance or two of far-fetched names, as affording 
a sort of explanation of the many aliases borne by 
country-folk, whose nicknames come to be at 
length regarded as their real ones. (Let me re- 
mark in passing that the word nich in nickname 
is cognate with the German word necken, to mock, 
to quiz, and the English word nag, to tease, pro- 
voke). I had a family in my parish once whom I 
supposed for years to bear the name of Romsey. 
The children were called little Romsey s, their 
father young Romsey, their mother Mrs. Romsey, 
and their grandfather old Romsey ; but I found at 
last that their true name was Groves, and that they 
had only obtained the other appellation because the 



DIALECTIC EXPRESSIONS. 165 

old man had originally come from the parish of 
Romsey. Such an instance may help to explain 
the fact that there is scarcely a village in England 
which has not given its name to some family. 
But this curiosity of nomenclature is far outdone 
by the following. I had buried an old man, whom 
we will call Brown, at the ripe age of ninety- three ; 
and on remarking his great age to the clerk, he 
said, 'His brother is older still, Sir.' ' What bro- 
ther ?' I asked, ' Why, Master Jumper, Sir, as lives 
at such a place.' ' But how can Master Juniper be 
a brother of Master Brown ?' I enquired ; ' they 
have different names.' ' Oh yes, Sir ; but Jumper's 
only a sort of a by-name ; his right name's Brown. 
6 And how came he by the name of Jumper ? has 
he borne it all his life ?' ' Ever since he was quite 
a young man, Sir ; he got it by his wife.' Now I 
knew that old Jumper could never have married ' 
an heiress and changed his family name for her 
money, so I was puzzled into farther enquiry, which 
elicited the story that this Brown, as a young 
man, had been 'keeping company ' with a damsel 
of whom he grew tired, and who, on his declining 
to marry her, had flung herself down a well to put 
an end to her existence. She was, however, brought 
up alive, and the force of public opinion, which is 
a pretty strong thing even in a little country parish, 
had induced young Brown to espouse the fair 



166 1V0BD GOSSIP. 

maiden who had taken his coldness so much to 
heart; * and so, Sir, you see/ concluded the clerk, 
1 that's how he was always called Jumper from 
that time, because his wife jumped down the well for 
him ' ! 

We may farther note, in connection with our 
present subject, the expressiveness of some dia- 
lectic phrases. Can there be a better definition of 
a prosy preacher's style than to say that ' his voice 
is like a dumbledore in a warming-pan ' ? — a dum- 
ble-dore meaning an humble-bee. The word is 
varied in some parts to dtimbledrane, equivalent to 
humble drone. Apropos, it may be interesting to 
give an explanation of the term ' humble-bee,' as 
there seems a common doubt whether this or 
' bumble-bee ' be the correct expression ; the latter 
form has in its favour the alliterative line, — 

1 Abominablo bumblo-bee with its tail cut off,' 

which some of my readers may recognise as a 
nursery saying. ' Humble,' however, is the right 
word ; and the subjoined ' bee ' is, strictly speak- 
ing, pleonastic ; for we find in German Hummel 
(derived from the droning sound the insect makes) 
to signify 'h amble-bee.' 

How expressive, again, is such a phrase as ' the 
incoming ground ' for the down-hill part of a 



DIALECTIC EXPRESSIONS. 167 

journey, or a ' cobweb morning ' for such a misty 
morning as shows the hedges and furze-bushes 
covered with gossamer ! Again, how well the 
phrase ' all in a hoo,' ' all in a clutter,' expresses 
our idea of confusion and disorder ! This idea 
has another and a French term singularly common 
in dialectic use ; a country-woman in excusing the 
disorder of her cottage when the parson or any 
other visitor drops unexpectedly in, will say, 
• Everything's in a dishabille, Sir.' I remember 
meeting with a good parallel to this in Ireland. 
A sheep had been killed and carried away by 
night from the park of a neighbour, and one of his 
men in describing his pursuit of the thieves, said 
he tracked their footsteps to a certain spot where 
they seemed to have come to ' a sort of & faux pas.' 
This particular man was a pensioner from the Life 
Guards, and may have first picked up the expres- 
sion from London gossip or newspaper reports ; 
but the fact that others repeated it from his mouth 
may afford us an instance of how such words from 
time to time insert themselves into a language. 

Illustrations of the influence of one language on 
another in countries where both are generally 
spoken will appear in many American dialectic 
expressions, which show the genius of the German 
tongue affecting the spoken English. I just quote 
one example in illustration, which shall be that of 



168 WOBB GOSSIP. 

an American farmer describing his shooting equip- 
ment as consisting of ' a scatter-gnn and a "brace of 
smell-dogs.' Had he been writing and not talking, 
his phrase would have been ' a fowling-piece and 
a brace of spaniels ; ' but he followed the natural 
instinct of one accustomed to hearing around him 
the German language (which is capable of infinite 
expansion by the formation of compounds), and 
manufactured for himself the two expressive com- 
-uJj-ha. posites I have quoted. 

How curiously, again, has the trick of i beating 
about the bush ' in evasive, unsatisfactory speech 
got the dialectic name of ' pramble talk,' from the 
word c preamble ' ! 

The other day a worthy parishioner of mine, 
talking of a couple of young people about to be 
married, said, 'Ay, Sir, they used to go up to 
school together everyday when they were little 
ones ; we always said as they'd be a little two, 9 — 
meaning a 'pair. Now this, by analogy, helps us 
to understand the peculiar derivation of our word 
toe. The word is the singular of ten, used in the 
same way as the military expression 'three's 
about,' &c. Having formed an irregular singular 
from the plural word ten (the number of the toes), 
we have made an apparently regular plural there- 
from by the subjoined s. The accuracy of this 
statement is manifest from the form of the plural 



DIALECTIC EA'PEESSIOXS. 169 

being really identical with ten in the other Teu- 
tonic dialects ; thus in German we have zelie, a toe, 
plural zehen, toes, or ten. ' On tiptoe ' in German 
is ' auf den zelien' — on the ten, which would, in fact, 
be the form we should expect the word toes to 
take in Anglo- Saxon. Chaucer, as we shall see, 
has it as tone for toen; and such an expression we 
can illustrate simply enough by reference to a 
person 'going on all fours,' also described in 
German in the words ' auf alien Vierm.' I venture 
to transcribe here the treatment of the word toe 
in two of the great dictionaries — Richardson's and 
TTebster's, — to show in the case of the former 
how nearly right a man may be and yet go astray, 
and in both from how far a derivation may be 
fetched, and at how long a range a random etymo- 
logical shot may be erroneously supposed to hit 
its mark. Richardson says, — 

'Toe. Piers Plowman^ writes the plural ton. 
Chaucer writes it tone, i. e., to-en ; Dutch, tee, teen ; 
German, zaelie (zelie) ;f A.S. ta,\ which the etymo- 
logists derive from Greek Ta-eiv, extendere, from the 

* This is a good instance of the general ignorance on the 
subject of Early English. Piers Plowman was an imaginary 
character, whose vision was narrated by Langlande, and no 
more a writer than Nicholas Nickleby or Little Dombey. 

f Had he inserted the plural zehcn he could not have 
missed the right derivation. 

\ PI. iaen, ten. 



170 WOBD GOSSIP. 

A.S. verb teon, to extend, to expand, or from " ten" 
because that is their number. It is probably from 
teon, to take ; applied first to the Galons or claws of 
an animal ' — as if a term meaning to expand could 
be applied to the toes, which cannot be expanded 
or extended ! 

Here is Webster's etymology : — 

c Toe. [Sax., ta; Germ., zehe ; Sw. ta; Dan., 
taae; Fr., doigt dzipied; Lat., digitus. Toe is con- 
tracted from tog, the primary word on which Lat. 
digitus is formed, coinciding with dug, and signify- 
ing a shoot.'] ' 

But I must cease this treading on lexicographers' 
toes, and pass on to some other subject of gossip, 
merely noting in the dialectic name of margs for 
the tall branching meadow daisies one out of many 
instances of retention in dialects of foreign words 
which have either never existed or have become 
obsolete in our own written language. Marg is of 
course an abbreviation of the French word mar- 
guerite, & daisy. 



171 



CHAPTER XII. 

ON WORDS NEWLY MADE OR NEWLY APPLIED. 

There are many persons whose intentions are ex- 
cellent, and whose principles are perfectly sound 
npon philological points, who jet are yery apt to 
lose their heads on the subject of newly formed 
or newly applied words. This chiefly arises from 
their oyerlooking one fact most important in its 
relation to this particular subject, namely, that 
words being only added to a language when a true 
necessity for them is felt, those whose necessity 
prompts the coinage no more pretend to be philo- 
logists than the man who in case of need gets a 
cork from a bottle with a piece of string pretends 
to be a- maker of patent corkscrews. The bottle- 
opener wants the cork out ; failing better means 
he uses a string, or whateyer else his need and his 
inyention suggest to him. The word-maker 
wants an idea expressed, and his need and his in- 
yention produce a word as a sign of that idea, 



172 WOBB GOSSIP. 

which, however much a makeshift, answers its 
purpose. Once made and set going, it gets the 
start in our language — a matter of such prime 
importance that by the time a philologist has been 
found to manufacture the correct term, he will 
find it no more needed than the patent corkscrew 
after the contents of the bottle have been drunk. 
However correct the term may be — the necessity 
for it no longer existing — nothing can be harder 
than to get it into general use ; for language of its 
very nature rejects superfluities of expression, as 
is evident from the fact of so few real synonyms 
(that is, words meaning in every sense exactly the 
same thing) existing in any language whatever. 
Even in a composite language like our own, 
wherein we have numberless Teutonic words, in 
structure exact equivalents of Romanic ones also 
in our vocabulary, the abhorrence language has 
to superfluity — like that of nature to a vacuum — 
leads unconscious usage, as if by some instinctive 
direction, to limit the application of one or other 
of the seemingly synonymous terms, and to render 
possible some definition of their difference. Un- 
less this be done one or other term gains predomi- 
nance, and ruthlessly tramples its unyielding rival 
into the thick and stifling dust of ages. A very 
striking instance of this may be drawn from two 
admirably expressive Early English words corre- 



ON WORDS NEWLY MADE OB APPLIED. 173 

sponcling in meaning to our modern terms presump- 
tion and despair, in the religions sense : I mean the 
words overhope and wanhope. They are beautiful 
words, pure in origin, pathetic in accent, direct in 
application, and distinct in definition ; but they 
are gone for ever from our spoken language, — and 
why ? Because the pulpit speech, based so broadly 
on Latin, supplanted them ; and their Latin syno- 
nyms having once got ahead of them in ordinary 
usage, ended by eclipsing them altogether. 

Many of my readers will remember how much 
debate was occasioned by the introduction of the 
word ' telegram ' some years ago. There were 
plenty of faults pointed out in its structure, and. 
plenty of substitutes proposed for it by the fault- 
finders. Several of these substitutes were doubt- 
less better and more correctly formed ; but, in the 
words of the old epitaph, ' physicians was in vain ;' 
the term was made, launched, accepted, adopted ; 
and, however unvvillingly, the purists had to yield 
to the utilitarians in speech, and end the dispute 
with the true though unconsolatory reflection, 
1 fiisrit irrevocable verbum.' 

The same thing has occurred in the introduction 
of multitudes of words into our language, though 
without attracting auy notice or meeting with any 
opposition ; words whose structure is totally un- 
justifiable on strict philological grounds are made 



174 WOBD GOSSIP. 

by tlie ignorant to express their ideas. They get a 
start in the language, they supply a certain want, 
and, having served a good purpose, the language 
overlooks their inaccuracy in gratitude for their 
efficiency ; it receives them as guests, adopts them 
as children, and finally assigns them an actual 
birthright, in the same way as it often takes a wan- 
dering alien term from some other tongue to fill a 
vacant place by its own fireside, and naturalizes 
it in time among its true-born offspring. 

In this introduction of new words, moreover, 
the incorrect expression really has the better 
chance of acceptance, and for two reasons, — firstly, 
the odds are vastly in favour of its being wanted 
and consequently made by an unscientific person 
rather than by a philologist ; and secondly, it has 
not only a start, but a very long start, of the more 
accurate term. It almost invariably becomes 
general in conversational use before it appears in 
literature ; it regularly germinates, buds, blooms 
in conversation ; and it is mostly in the form of a 
fixed result, as a sort of gathered fruit, that it 
takes its place in written speech ; while the better 
word which might supplant it must, to change my 
metaphor, raise but a baby hand, and utter a 
trembling cry against the strength of maturity and 
the shout of a man. 



175 



CHAPTER XIII. 

ON NEW WORDS MADE, OBJECTED TO, OR WANTED. 

The statement made in my last chapter as to the 
manner in which new words are introduced, not 
only into our own, but into all languages, may 
possibly be construed into a justification of every 
word which any person, learned or unlearned, may 
choose to launch into a vocabulary ; and were this 
admitted to be the case, would deprive us of any 
logical grounds for objecting to even the most 
frivolous and contemptible innovations which 
might at any time be attempted. What I have 
stated, how r ever, may help us to see the fallacy of 
such a deduction ; since, whatever the theory of 
word- structure may be, the fact of a word being 
wanted, while it may shelter an ill- constructed, 
can never justify an unnecessary one ; and we may 
do well to remember, as a consolatory fact, that 
language will not tolerate any entirely useless ex- 
pression. A speaker or an author may, of course 



176 WORD G08SIP. 

at his own sweet will, introduce any word he 
chooses, which, however formed, his readers or 
hearers may comprehend either from its context 
or from its composition ; and that word should 
of course appear in any dictionary professing to 
be an index of all words contained by (say) the 
English language. But this does not make it an 
English word a bit more, than a traveller's state- 
ment, that he had paid a German hotel-bill in 
thalers, would prove a thaler to be a coin of 
English currency. For example, let me take a 
word used by Chapman, the great translator of 
Homer, but so far as I can ascertain, used only by 
him, and probably only once. It is to be found in 
his commentary on the second book of the Iliad 
where, comparing Virgil with Homer, he says : 
6 Virgil hath nothing of his own but onely elocu- 
tion ; his invention, matter, and forme being all 
Homer's, which, laid by a man, that which Virgil 
addeth is onelie the work of a woman, to netifie 
and polish.' Now, Chapman's new word netifie 
suits his context well ; it is expressive, it is 
intelligible ; his special eminence as a poet and a 
scholar might lead one to suppose his authority 
sufficient to bring such a word into general use, 
as many poets and scholars before and since have 
succeeded in doing with words they introduced ; 
but netifie was not necessary, and so it has pe- 



INTRODUCTION OF NEW WORDS. 177 

rished, a dead-born child, its very existence only 
known by its entry, so to speak, in an old, for- 
gotten register. 

The same destiny has befallen many other at- 
tempted additions to onr written speech; how 
many, nothing can give us an idea of till the 
Philological Society publishes its great Dictionary 
of the English language. I will give a parallel 
instance of a German word-fabrication from the 
nineteenth, as Chapman's netifie is from the close 
of the sixteenth century. 

In the year 1835, a German actor named Jerr- 
man* wrote a book describing his experiences and 
his quarrels at Cologne. A more trenchant, and 
at the same time a more witty and entertaining 
work would be hard to find, and, unquestionably, 
it was widely read at the time of its appearance. 
In this work he undertook to construct an epithet 
to signify the clique of his antagonists, as in 
algebra x or y is used to signify a number or 
quantity, and so he called them by the general 
term of ' mentecaptische Jiinglinge.' But the 
word, as may be supposed, was not wanted, and 

* Jerrman's remarkable talent may be judged from the 
fact that, enraged at his speaking of French being laughed 
at, he undertook to represent, within a twelvemonth, on the 
stage of the Theatre Francois, Talma's greatest characters, 
and actually achieved his wonderful task with the most s'gnal 
success. 



178 WORD GOSSIP. 

probably has never been used, even as a quotation, 
from Jerrman's time to our own. And this is, of 
course, tbe fate of most words merely made to 
serve a purpose. 

Many of my readers will remember laughing 
over one sucb freak of the lamented Thackeray, in 
describing the Rev. Charles Honeyman and his 
doings. He mentions how the reverend gentleman 
had once been presented with a teapot full of 
sovereigns by his admiring congregation, and goes 
on to say, ' The devo-teepot still remains, but the 
sovereigns — where are they ? ' 

Akin to such an instance, though neither so 
entertaining nor so directly intelligible, are such 
expressions as the following, which I take from the 
* Contemporary Review ' for May, 1868. At p. 140, 
in a critique upon a theological work, I find the 
subjoined sentence : — 

' Far better is the next part of his address, 
where he shows that Mr. Bennett and the Orbicu- 
lar essayists have departed not only from the 
teaching of the fathers and divines, &c.' 

Now, what is the meaning of the word Orbicular 
here ? A dictionary will tell us, ' circular, round, 
in the form of an orb,' but that gives us no assist- 
ance whatever, since we can scarcely suppose the 
essayists mentioned to be all of aldermanic propor- 
tions (like the unfortunate deputation of Palatine 



INTRODUCTION OF NEW WORDS. 179 

bakers celebrated in Sadler's famous song,* as 
having: waited on a minister to solicit the fixing 
of a higher price for bread, declaring themselves 
unable to live at the low rate they were compelled 
to sell at, and who, poor fellows, were answered 
b y the minister with the ready words, ' Why, 
gentlemen, don't say you're starving, only look at 
yourselves ! ') No, the word orbicular, printed 
with a capital initial, is but a reference to the 
name of the Rev. Orby Shipley, one of the more 
prominent of the essayists under notice. Of 
course, such a word as this is but a nickname, 
which might or might not have ' stuck ' to those 
it was applied to. OmniversaZity , a word used in 
the July number of the same publication, may, on 
the other hand, obtain adoption, and be sanctioned 
by use as being a word in some sort necessary for 
simplifying such an expression as ' comprehensive 
versatility ; ' while yet another word, from the 
same excellent publication, is both witty and ex- 
pressive, I mean ' platitudinarian,' in the number 
for February, 1868. There is another new word, 
of much the same character, which also may have 
a chance of coming into use, from the absence of 
any other word expressing its meaning. It occurs, 
as follows, in the editor's, Mr. Furnivall's, preface 

* Die Deputation. Nadler's Frohlich Palz. 
N 2 



180 WORD GOSSIP. 

to ' Russell's Rooke of Nurture,' published this 
year by the Early English Text Society. ' I do 
not write for men in the depths of that deducated 
Philistinism which lately made a literary man say 
to one of our members, on his printing a book 
of the fifteenth century, "Is it possible that you 
care how those barbarians, our ancestors, lived ? " 
The word coined here, ' deducated,' supplies the 
want its writer experienced of a single term to 
express, not the absence — but the misdirection of 
education in such persons as he spoke of. 

This leads me to note a few examples of words 
wanting in our language, the absence of which 
compels us to a frequent use of periphrastic ex- 
pressions. The number of such deficiencies is of 
course very great, nor is the present a fit occa- 
sion for presenting any systematic list of them, 
which, after all, could never be an exhaustive one. 
I will simply call attention to three or four. 

The Germans have a word GescJiwister, signify- 
ing one's brothers and sisters collectively. ISTow, this 
meaning no single English word can convey. The 
phrase, ' How many are you in family ? ' can only 
suffice in the case where the persons referred to 
are known to have neither parents nor children ; 
and the only way in which the German question, 
' Haben sie Geschwister ? ' can be translated into 
English is, ' Have you any brothers or sisters ? ' 



INTRODUCTION OF NEW JVOBDS. 181 

How much, again, we want some word as con- 
venient and expressive as the neat French term 
6 personnel '(which the Germans have also, at least 
as a compound, in the word Dienst-personaT), for 
the individuals of every class concerned, let us say, 
in the managing of railway traffic. To express such 
an idea, we have to beg, borrow, and paraphrase in 
a way which, after all, is never complete or com- 
prehensive. We may use a military metaphor, 
and speak of a person ' on the staff ' of the rail- 
way, or a diplomatic one, and speak of an c attache,' 
or we may simply say an ' official,' but which of 
these expressions could we properly apply to a 
lamp- cleaner or an under-port er ? How, again, 
would the superintendent of one^of our great lines 
like to be called an i employe ' merely, or its 
treasurer or auditor to be classed among the 
persons ' in its employment,' or numbered among 
the company's c servants ' ? But such a word as 
personnel can, without any sort of equivocation, 
include every class of individual engaged on such 
an undertaking. 

Another wanting word, which after all is much 
more necessary than either of those I have cited, 
is an equivalent to the Latin verisimilis, and the 
French vraisemblable. Our poverty of expression 
for this idea is remarkable. We may say, 'the 
thing has an air of truth,' '* it looks reasonable,' or, 



182 WOBB GOSSIP. 

by using an elliptical phrase, may come nearer 
still to the true sense of the term, in saying ' It 
seems likely ' (sc. to be true), but, after all, none 
of these give the exact equivalent to the term 
vraisemblctble. Yet, our German neighbours pos- 
sess and use the exact synonym for it in the word, 
' wahrscheinlich,' which we invariably translate by 
'probable,' a word conveying a different idea alto- 
gether. We must, I fear, despair of getting a 
true equivalent for verisimilis, and that from the 
structure of the word itself ; to form it according 
to proper analogy would give verisimilar ', the sound 
of which, instead of like truth, would signify very 
like, and therefore that word, of which one instance 
at least is to be found in our literature, has alto- 
gether failed of acceptance. It is too late in the 
day to introduce such words as trutlilike or true- 
seeming, though these be nearest to an unequivocal 
translation of the term, and so, I fear, we must be 
content with borrowing the French word and 
printing it in italics, till long use makes it 
English (as has been the case with etiquette and 
multitudes more), and the compositors dignify it 
with Roman type, making it merge in the privilege 
of its adoption the badge of its descent, and (like 
the charity-boy when he leaves off his school suit) 
become more respected in becoming less conspi- 
cuous. 

It is fashionable to fall into fits of fury against 



INTRODUCTION OF NEW WOBDS. 183 

some of the newly made words in the language, as 
deserving reprobation on account of their structure. 
Now, if this be done in time, it is right, and may 
be useful ; but, as I have before shown, it is utterly 
hopeless once a word has got a footing. Here are 
a few words, as instances, which have been objected 
to : talented (which after all is wrongfully accused 
of being a new word, it being really a revived one), 
ventilate, enlightenment, reliable, desirability; surely, 
no sane man can see a possibility of ousting any 
one of these words, however faultily formed, from 
a language which needs to express their meaning, 
has no equivalent to supply their places, and, in 
fact, employs them universally in speech and 
writing, day by day. 

But there are better grounds for objecting to 
words for which equivalents already exist. Why, 
for instance, should the language endure to be 
saddled with such an unnecessary addition as 
'querulity,' given us by the 'Pall Mall Gazette,' 
under date of June 27, 1866 ; or, as 'gratefulness,' 
used by the ' Oxford Times,' an excellently written 
paper, in its issue for August 29 of this year ? 
Useless though many of such variations are, it is 
astonishing how little notice they receive, and how 
often they succeed so far in crowding themselves 
into notice as, at all events, to make a person 
hesitate between using them or the better words 
whose places they try to take. Doubtless there 



184 WORD GOSSIP. 

are some of my readers wlio have been reduced by 
such hesitation to write both terms which occur 
to them down on their blotting paper, and to allow 
the eye to select the more familiar and correct form 
which the puzzled ear could no longer accurately 
distinguish. 

Some words we find used in a sense so new to 
ourselves that we fancy they must be incorrect. 
Here is a specimen, from a report of the trial of 
President Johnson : ' There was (on a certain day) 
only a slim attendance.' We are accustomed to this 
word only in two senses, one conveying the general 
idea of slender, slight in figure, the other being the 
particular appellation of a sort of teacake, called, slim 
cake, probably from its thinness. Yet the expression 
' slim,' as applied to attendance, is nearer the orig- 
inal meaning in which the word came to us than 
either of the senses in which we are wont to use it. 
It does not strike us as awkward to say, ' there 
was a thin attendance,' which is equivalent to the 
ordinary meaning of slim ; and still less do we 
object to the expression, ' a bad attendance,' which 
is the sense in which we first received the word, 
from the German schlimm, bad, its root idea in that 
language probably signifying crooked, irregular* 

'* Compare with this the analogous prime meanings of 
light (schlecht, bad), and slender' (slanting, out of right line, 
irregular), both which words we apply to the human figure 
in the same sense as slim. 



INTRODUCTION OF NEW WORDS, 185 

The following extract from Barrow, on the 
Pope's supremacy, will show the earlier use of the 
word, analogous to the American one : ' The 
Church of Rome, indeed, was allowed to be the 
principal Church . But why ? Was it in regard 
to the succession of St. Peter ? No ; that was 
Si, slim excuse.' 

The question may then suggest itself: How 
should the word slim, having lost in English its 
first meaning, had, come to be used again with that 
meaning in the phrase we are examining ? And 
the answer may be found in the fact that enough 
of the German element is mixed with the English, 
both in American speech and writing, to account 
for this unconscious restoration to its right use of 
a word like this before us. 

Some preposterous attempts are made from time 
to time to invent euphonious terms for things 
which common words seem to express too plainly. 
One example of such word-fabrication we may 
find in the heading of an advertisment (which 
occasionally appears in the ' Times ') of a home for 
drunkards.- Chronic Alcoholism ! ! ! I say nothing 
of such refinements as ' dipsomania ' and ' klepto- 
mania,' for drunkenness and shoplifting when in- 
dulged in by the upper classes, which are all very 
well so far as they are understood, but there is 
something sublime in clothing the meaning of 



186 WOBD GOSSIP, 

'habits of drinking,' or ' habitual drunkenness,' 
under the pathetic periphrasis of ' chronic alcohol- 
ism.' Fancy the word in common nse ; fancy the 
poor blowsy, red-faced, shaky-kneed drunkard on 
his way to the lock-up, with his greasy cap half 
off his shaggy head, trying to be dignified and 
angry at the same time, and getting, to his splut- 
tering enquiry — ' Now, then, policeman, what do 
you mean by this ?' — the laconic (?) answer of his 
captor, ' You're alcoholised !' Such a word, so ap- 
plied, might frighten the patient into a fit, or else 
immensely exalt his notion of the dignity of drink, 
which can earn a man so magnificent an epithet. 

On a par with this, but even less comprehensible, 
is the word alienist ; the meaning of which must 
be a mystery to most men until they have it ex- 
plained. Of all the monstrosities of words, this is 
one of the most impertinent. We must go a long 
way round for its meaning. We know what an 
alien is, we can understand the word alienate, 
and it is an intelligible, though circumlocutory 
statement, that c a person is suffering from aliena- 
tion of intellect ' — a rather long way of saying 
what a noble critic of our day has expressed in 
the more concise phrase, 'the man is off his head.' 
Well, then, there are people for whom the word 
madness does not exist, for whom even the word 
insanity is not grand enough, who first coin the 



INTRODUCTION OF NEW WORDS. 187 

phrase l alienation of intellect,' and finding it too 
long for convenience drop off the tail of their 
sentence, and nse the word ' alienation ' alone, to 
express madness. Men of this sort hesitate to 
speak of a ' mad doctor ' (which indeed is a most 
equivocal way of describing one whose speciality 
is the treatment of the insane), and so they 
actually use the word c alienist ■ to express such a 
physician. If our language could, without notice 
or protest, accept so ridiculous a term, we should 
soon be little better off than the builders of the 
tower of Babel. 

The subject of words mismade leads one natur- 
ally to that of words misused, a few examples of 
which, becoming daily familiar, deserve to be 
noted. For instance, we see, continually, descrip- 
tions in the newspapers of a residential estate to 
be sold, meaning a property with a suitable resi- 
dence upon it ; the expression is a silly one, but 
yet conveys a definite meaning, and answers a 
sort of purpose ; but there is another instance in 
which, by implication, people insult themselves 
continually ; I mean the phrase in which govern- 
esses or housekeepers in search of situations 
describe themselves as c thoroughly domesticated.' 
The natural inference, of course, is that they have 
passed from a savage to a civilized condition, and 
that a time has been when they might fitly have 



188 WORD GOSSIP. 

been described as wild beasts. They mean to say 
they are homely, sociable, domestic in character ; 
but then domesticated is two syllables longer than 
domestic, and must, it would seem in consequence, 
be a much superior word. Akin to this is the 
expression of the newspaper reporter who, in 
attempting to describe ladies' dresses at a ball, 
informed the world that ' Mrs. X. Y. Z. was 
habilitated in a robe of white satin,' and of the re- 
lieving officer who declared that a man neglecting 
to provide for his family was l amendable to the 
law.' 

The word ' demoralize,' again, bad enough in 
structure, has reached to utter absurdity in ap- 
plication. The American war and its usages 
brought it into general use as a gentle term for 
c rout,' or ' put to flight,' and a story is told of a 
cowardly fellow skulking to the rear during an 
engagement, who, on being brought to a halt by 
an indignant officer with the enquiry, ' You rascal, 
what are you falling back for ? Are you wounded ? ' 
coolly replied, ' ~No, colonel, I can't exactly say I'm 
wounded, but Tm dreadfully demoralized.' Even 
this application of the word, though it be a trans- 
ference of its true collective to an individual sense, 
may be permitted to pass as a ludicrous instance 
of what may come of long words, but the follow- 
ing extract will show its use in a still more absurd 



INTRODUCTION OF NEW WORDS. 189 

connection. I cannot resist quoting the whole 
paragraph in which it occurs. 

' A time for all tkixgs. — Our townsman (says 
the ' Winona Republican '), Mr. Train, has just had 
a narrow escaoe from a frightful death. He started 

J. o 

for Rushford in company with a Mr. Hanson, a 
merchant of that place. The two gentlemen were 
riding in a buggy, drawn by one horse. In the 
buggy there was a keg of powder, weighing 
twenty-five pounds, together with other small 
packages of light goods. Mr. Hanson was smoking 
his pipe. The result was that in the course of 
the drive the powder exploded. The horse, in 
addition to losing all the hair on his tail, became 
considerably demoralized, and ran at the top of 
his speed. The two men fell upon the whiffle - 
tree, and Mr. Hanson, to clear himself from the 
wreck, jumped over the wheel, falling into a mud- 
hole, in a half-stupefied condition. Mr. Train 
clung to the pieces, and was carried forward about 
a mile at a pretty rapid pace. On coming to a 
stop, he took an inventory of the concern, and 
found that the buggy was completely shattered : 
the bottom and seat entirely gone, and the reach 
and axles bent nearly double, so that the four 
wheels came almost together. Mr. Train himself 
had been stripped of his outer clothing, about 
one third of the hair on his head, and all his 



190 WOBD GOSSIP, 

whiskers burnt off, and his eyebrows and lashes 
gone. Yet, strange to say, he was not hurt in 
any other way, and after extinguishing the fire in 
his remaining clothing he started back to find his 
companion. Mr. Hanson was badly bruised, and 
one of his hands was severely burnt, but he had 
suffered no serious injury. The two contrived to 
get into Rushford, thankful that a worse fate had 
not overtaken them.' 

It is rare to come on such a delicious extract 
as this : ' the horse, in addition to losing all the 
hair on Ms tail, became considerably demoralized,' 
is an expression which can only be equalled in 
naivete by the statement which follows concerning 
Mr. Train, how, ' after being carried forward a 
mile at a pretty rapid pace,'' on ' coming to a stop, 
he took an inventory of the concern.' Who should 
cavil at the word demoralize being misused, if it 
have aided to enrich our literature by such a 
charming piece of characteristic prose ? 



191 



CHAPTER XIV. 

ON SOME DISPUTED DERIVATIONS. 

Many of my readers may remember how, in the 
dull season half a dozen years ago (when there 
was little to fill the newspapers, and at a time of 
year when tales of monstrous gooseberries were 
too monstrous to be believed), the surprising 
linguistic talents of two ingenuous youths supplied 
the bored universe of British quidnuncs with a 
new sensation. The great spelling case of ' Rane- 
deer versus Reindeer, Raindeer et olios] was opened 
before the bar of public opinion, and the old dusty 
copies of ' Johnson's Dictionary ' felt an unwonted 
throb of life pervade their sluggish vitals. It can 
serve no good purpose to revive the scandal which 
gave rise to the discussion, but the principal attempt 
at fixing the true spelling of the word by its de- 
rivation was made in a letter published in the 
' Times ' * under the well-known signature of Gr. W. 
D., the salient points of which I here subjoin : — 

* November 15, 1862. 



192 WORD GOSSIP. 

6 There can be no manner of doubt that the 
original spelling of the word, as we first find it in 
English, is rainedeer or ranedeer, but at the same 
time it is certain that latterly reindeer has been the 
received spelling. 

1 Bear with me while I try to prove these points, 
First, rainedeer or ranedeer. The first part of this 
componnd word is neither a Teutonic nor a Scan- 
dinavian, but a Turanian or Lappish word. From 
this source it has passed into the other languages 
of Europe. In Ihre's Dictionary of the Northern 
tongues you will find under " ren" the Swedish 
form of the word, the following observations, based 
on the treatise De Bangiferis, which Peter Gran 
published at Upsalain 1685 : — " Lapponas animal 
in genere raingo nuncupare, et rangiferos speciatim ; 
quumque hoc unicum animantium genus sit quod 
illorum constituit opes, probabile est nomen hoc ab 
illis ad caeteras nationes dimanasse." When and 
how, then, did this original form of the word, first 
meaning animal in general and then this kind of 
deer in particular, which constitutes the wealth of 
a nomadic race, first make its way into the Eng- 
lish tongue ? On this point we have ample infor- 
mation, and, probably, no imported word in our 
language has so old and satisfactory a history. 
When King Alfred was superintending the trans- 
lation of Orosius he worked into it all that he could 



ON SOME DISP JJTEJ) DERIVA TIONS. 1 9 3 

learn from travellers, and, with respect to the 
North of Europe, he was helped by a Northman 
from Helgeland, named Othere. From him the 
great West Saxon king first heard of Finns (Lapps ) 
and of a kind of deer " which they call ' hranas ' " 
— " Tha deor hi hatath hranas." I am not aware 
that the word is ever found in Anglo-Saxon except 
in this account given by Othere, nor can I find it 
in English before the end of the sixteenth century, 
when it awoke out of its long sleep in Hakluyt's 
Voyages, published in 1599. There will be found, 
under the year 890, a translation of Othere's 
voyage, containing the following passage : — " Six 
hundred tame deere of that kinde which they call 
' ranedeere, 9 " and so on ranedeere in two other 
places, while in the marginal notes of the edition 
of 1599 stand " sixe hundreth mine Deere." It is 
also found in Sommer raindeer, and Johnson 
followed Sommer in this as in other things. 

' This, I think, is decisive as to the way in 
which what may be called the a form of the word 
first came into use. It continued to prevail at 
least down to the time of Addison. In the Spec- 
tator, No. 406, will be found some very frigid 
amorous poetry ascribed to Ambrose Thillips ? 
beginning — 

* ' Haste, my raindeer, and let us nimbly go/ 


I 



194 WORD GOSSIP. 

' As for reindeer, or tlie e form, which I hold to 
be the true form of the word at the present day, 
we owe it to the Scandinavians. In these tongues 
the combination ai is seldom or never heard. At 
a very early period — long, in fact, before the time 
of Alfred — the ISTorthmen used the form hreinn, the 
original of the rem or ren in the modern dialects. 
Thus we find it in the poetic Edda, in the Hava- 
mal, the High Song, a collection of proverbial 
sentences and gnomic wisdom, acknowledged to be 
one of the oldest pieces in that venerable volume, 
where the poet, in the bitterness of his heart no 
doubt, makes the following rather ungallant com- 
parisons, which I have freely rendered : — 

1 " So is't to woo a woman fair 
Who flirteth in her heart, 
As when an unroughed steed is driven 
Along the slippery ice, 
A frisky, headstrong, two-year-old 
Unbroken to the yoke ; 
Or when against a roaring gale 
One tacks in helmless ship, 
Or halting tries to hold the hrein 
"When hillsides thaw in spring." 

1 Yfhere the last couplet runs in the original : — 

" Edr skyli haltr henda 
Hrein i thafjalli." 

• In, later Skaldic poetry the word is quite 



ON SOME DISPUTED DEBIVATIONS. 195 

common, as may be seen by a reference to 
Egilsson's Lexicon, Poeticum, suh voce "hreinn," 
and also in the prose dialects.' 

ISTow, though. I agree with G. W. D.'s conclusion 
as to this word, namely, that our modern spelling 
reindeer is the most accurate form, yet I disagree 
with his argument, and venture to supplement it 
as follows : — 

That our earliest English spelling is with an a, 
I am not in a position to controvert, though this 
proves nothing as to correctness, when we consider 
how arbitrary our early English spelling is ; but 
that it ever came from the Lappish raingo (a 
generic term for animal) seems, in spite of old 
Peter Gran, both irrational and unlikely. 

To assign this as the derivation would make the 
whole word signify merely a general idea twice 
repeated, raingo, deer (thier)= animal — animal; let 
us see whether we may not discover something 
more clear by treating the word as radically 
Teutonic. 

It does not even appear from G. W. D's quota- 
tion, * Tha deor hi hatath hranas ' that ' hrana ' 
was the Lappish word at all, but rather that it was 
the term used by Otherethe Northman in speaking 
to Alfred. G. W. D. admits that the word does 
not recur before Hakluyt, and then with the 
evident pronunciation rane instead of raan ; he 
o 2 



196 WORD GOSSIP. 

also himself cites instances abundant of the e form 

having obtained in the Teutonic dialects. 

I think, therefore, that if we can find a clear 

meaning conveyed to the word from a Teutonic 

root, the Lappish conjecture of Peter Gran may be 

allowed to drop. 

However spelt, the word reindeer conveys to us 

the idea of c a deer made to draiv burdens.' 

Let us, then, examine the word rennen (modern 
German), which is unquestionably cognate with 

the French 'renne ' and German ' renn-thier.' 

The following are some of its cognates : old high 
German, Bennan ; Anglo-Saxon, Herman ; oldlSTorse 
Bennja ; Gothic, Binnen. It will be observed that 
none of these (specially the Anglo-Saxon) have 
retained the a, which exists in the Gothic causative 
verb, ' rannyan,' to make to run, from which they 
all come, and from which they all have or had a 
causative meaning. See Ulphilas, Matt. v. 45, 
where Bannjan is used to translate ' maheth (His 
sun) to rise,' and compare : 1, middle high German, 
Hinnen=' incitato equo ferri.' (Annolied, 48) ; 2, 
mod. German, Renn-pferd, ' racehorse,' (horse 
made to run) ; 3, English, ' to run a horse for a 
race ;' and 4, old Norse, Bennja, ' to cause to run 
swiftly.' 

If these illustrations be applied to the case 
before us, we have as results the establishment of 



OX SOME DISPUTED DERIVATIOXS. 197 

the e in the spelling, and at the same time a clear 
explanation of the meaning of the word ; Henn- 
thier= an animal (deer) which iscau§ed(pr trained) 
to run (by men). 

I would account as follows for what I consider 
the mistaken mode of spelling the word with an a. 
Persons speaking of a renn-deer would naturally 
ally the idea of the creature's special use with that 
of the manner in which it was made useful, and 
think the renn a distinctive prefix for rein, by 
which it was driven, much as we speak of ' a saddle/ 
or 'a harness' horse. The words rein, rane, and 
rain being exactly similar in sound then became 
confused in use whilst our orthography was un- 
settled, and lexicographers, ignorant of etymologies 
(specially Teutonic ones), perpetuated errors of 
men who often spelled worse than they wrote. 

I will next offer a derivation for the French 
word ' canard,' signifying a hoax, which we had 
nearly naturalized in our language, when the 
Crimean war displaced it by introducing the word 
' shave,' which came into general use I know not 
how. I wish I did. 

I remember, when a child, hearing what pro- 
fessed to be ' the last speech and dying confession ' 
of So-and-so, hawked through the streets in printed 
broadsheets hours before the malefactor referred to 
made his appearance on the scaffold ; and during 



198 WORD GOSSIP. 

the war to wliich I liave referred. It was a common 
tiling to hear boys in the west end of London 
crying, late at night, intelligence (almost always 
fabricated) of i Great Battle !' ' Glorious Victory !' 
or i Sebastopol taken!' as the case might be. 
ISTow, the following extracts from Champneury* 
will show us exactly how the word ' canard ' ex- 
presses this very idea. I must premise that ' canard, ' 
' duck,' is the technical French (or rather Di- 
jonnais) name of coarse grey paper, on which broad- 
sheets and ballads are printed, probably from its 
roughness resembling a duck's skin ; in the same 
way as we talk of a chill turning us to goose skin, 
or, as our old friend Horace says — 

' Jam jam residunt cruribus asperse 
Pelles, et album mntor in alitem 
Superne.' 

With so much of preface, the extracts speak for 
themselves. 

' Un imprirneur dijonnais voulut faire un trait e 
avec Guenillon pour exploiter les condamnes a 
mort, sous forme de complainte. Guenillon re- 
fusa : il vendait bien les relations de brigands 
fameux et impossibles, de serpents monstreux qui 
etalaient leurs sonnettes fabuleuses sur la moitie 
d'une grande feuille de papier gris, dit canard ; 

* L'Usurier Blaizot, chap. iv. 



ON SOME DISPUTED DERIVATIONS. 199 

mais par un sentiment qn'il est bon d'honorer, il 
ne con sentaifc jamais a chanter les " dernier es paroles 
du condamne, ses malheurs, ses repentirs, ses 
aveux." 

' L'hiver, Gnenillon composait cles chansons 
.... Anx premiers beaux jours, il se rernettait 
bravement en route, le sac au dos, des rames de ca- 
nards dans le sac, et il allait enchanter les oreilles 
de ses compatristes.' 

Our dictionary-makers, for the most part, have 
given us an unsatisfactory derivation of the word 
quagmire, referring it to the word quake, to tremble, 
shake. It properly means a moving bog, and its 
original form is quick-mire, just as quick-sand 
signifies a shifting sandbank. We find the word 
in this form in * Piers Plowman's Crecle,' line 226,* 
where the fat friar is described — 

1 All wagged his fleche as a quyk mire.' 

Again, we have little help given to ascertain the 
derivation of the word flunkey, though it has pro- 
vided us with two new substantives, and at least 
one new adjective, namely, flunkeyism, flunkeydom, 
and flunkey ish. The word means a livery servant, 
as we all know, but yet with a sort of contemptu- 
ous signification attached to it. A conjecture or 

* Skeats' edition for Early English Text Society. Triibner, 
1867. 



200 WORD GOSSIP. 

two may be hazarded as to its derivation, seeing 
that the dictionaries leave it unexplained. 

In the first place, the French word 'flanqueur' 
might give a sort of solution to the question. It 
means one who fights on the flank, a skirmisher. 

Hence, it may very well have come to signify 
an escort in general, and so a footman, or number 
of suchj accompanying a carriage. Of course the 
woxd flank in this sense would be the root of the 
expression. Another solution seems less probable, 
but, as we are upon conjecturing, I insert it for as 
much as it is worth. It is this ? that it is a name 
of ridicule given from the epaulettes or wings for- 
merly, and still occasionally, worn by footmen on 
their shoulders ; the word flunk being the low Ger- 
man term for the high German flugel, a wing. 
This might bring us back again to the military 
sense through the word fugleman, properly flug el- 
man, literally a ' wing-man,' who takes distance 
on the wings of a regiment in order to give a line 
for dressing the ranks, somewhat the ofiice also of 
footmen in clearing the way for their masters 
through a crowd. 

The derivation of a kindred term, lackey, is also 
a matter which has given rise to much dispute, 
and is not yet satisfactorily settled. Its first known 
use however supports the view of flunkey being a 
military term, derived from either ' flanquer,' to 



ON SOME DISPUTED DERIVATIONS. 201 

flank, or 'flunk ' for 6 flilgel f 9 a wing, since lackey, 
in French, primarily signified a foot-soldier. 
Froissart, quoted by Menage, actually fixes the 
time when the word came into the language in 
that sense as being about the year 1300. A deri- 
vation for it has been attempted by several writers ; 
some have tried to dig it out of the Arabic labia, 
dirty (just as wisely as a contributor to ' ISTotes and 
Queries ' lately told us that brat was derived from a 
Polish word signifying brother, and as a profound 
-correspondent of ' Public Opinion,' Oct. 26, 1868, 
gravely derives the slang word 'codger' from the 
verb 'cogitate'!) Diez has done his best to prove 
its origin from the old Provencal lecai, dainty 
(comp. Germ, leckeria same sense), and shows how 
this word can convey the sense of parasitic, very 
appropriate to our use nowadays of the words 
lackey and flunkey; but of all the absurd con- 
jectures on the subject, I may give that of Menage 
as a deterrent example to synthetically disposed 
etymologists. He pitched upon the Latin word 
'verna,' a slave (as his origin for laqii-ais), and 
proceeded thus to build up his theory. Verna had 
a diminutive, vernula ; having got hold of this, 
who could object to his imagining vernula to have 
formed a word vemulacus, and if this were done 
without obstruction, could anyone be silly enough 
to censure his making that into another word still 



202 WOBD GOSSIP. 

vernulacaius ? l Here,' says Sclieler, i lie paused to 
take breath ; then, summoning up all his courage, 
he seized his elaborated word and cut it in two ; 
the first part he simply threw away; and the 
second remained, lacaius, c which all men must be 
idiots not to recognise as identical with laquais 11 ' 

After this it would be presumption indeed to 
hazard a conjecture on the subject ; but I will, in 
its place, venture to point out a curious analogy* 
The nearest word we can find in form and sound 
to lackey or laquais is the Latin laqueus, a rope with 
a slip knot, and especially a noose used for hang- 
ing. The contemptuous meaning which the word 
lackey has conveys almost always the idea of a 
rogue, and if we find, in various languages, a rogue 
designated by a word signifying a gallows rope, we 
may think laqueus as close a derivation as we are 
likely to get for lackey. 

In French, we have filou, signifying a rogue ; 
nor is at all clearly proved that our own word 
filch, is not derived from it, or that our other word 
fellow, in a contemptuous sense (as often applied 
also to a servant), does not own the same origin. 
This French word, filou, is paralleled by the earlier 
middle Latin term, Jilo (filonis) in the sense ofnebulo, 
a rogue. The connection of both words with the 
Latin filum and the French fil, thread, is obvious. 
In German, again, we have not only the word strich 



ON SOME DISPUTED DERIVATIONS. 203 

(rope, cord) and Strang (string), signifying a rogue 
or scamp,* but the word schlingel, from sclilinge, a 
noose, is applied in exactly the same way. 

This reference to hanging we find fortified still 
further by the word 'jpendard ' in French, and the 
English word ' slipstring ' used by Beaumont and 
Fletcher to signify one whom luck alone enabled 
to escape the gallows. 

Before parting with the words flunkey and lackey, 
I may offer a reason why they should both have been 
applied primarily to soldiers, and secondarily to 
servants ; and another, why they both retain a 
contemptuous signification. In the first place, in 
ancient feudal times all servants were, when need 
called, practically soldiers ; all were at their 
master's beck and call, and he was bound to bring 
them to Ms master's wars when duly summoned ; 
and that names of contempt should fall to the lot 
of men engaged in war is easily understood when 
we consider what the soldiers of the middle ages 
were, how brutal, unprincipled, and mercenary, 
and that even the very name of soldier was in its 
first use as much a reproach as the word mercenary 

* See Weigand ; Synonym en, No. 1719. 'As both strick 
and Strang were used to bind and to hang malefactors, the 
words have often been used in reference to this fact, so 
much so that the word stride is a common epithet for a dissi- 
pated, good-for-nothing fellow.' 



204 WORD GOSSIP. 

is in our own time, and marked the degrading 
difference which lies between the warrior — the free 
man — fighting in just quarrel 'for his prince and 
country, and the hireling cut-throat who sells his 
butcher's service, for mere bread and booty, to the 
highest bidder. 

There is something very delicious in the simple 
way some people use of setting the world right on 
etymological, as well as other subjects. I remem- 
ber three dear old maiden ladies once being very 
indignant with a brother of mine who, having shot 
for his first season, refused to accept their dictum 
to the effect that a fowling-piece was discharged 
by a light being put down the muzzle ; and I 
remember, as a boy, reading in a provincial paper 
that kissing was invented by the Mahometans, in 
order to ascertain, by the sense of smell, whether 
their wives had been committing the crime of drink- 
ing wine (though it struck my childish memory 
that kissing was mentioned in the book of Genesis 
ages before Mahomet was ever heard of). But I 
can beat the simple-minded positiveness of two 
such marvellous statements by the following sub- 
lime discovery of a writer in the ' Public Opinion ' 
of May 2, 1868. It is meant to set us all right as 
to the origin of the word News, and to most readers 
must have been news with a vengeance. I subjoin 



ON SOME DISPUTED DERIVATIONS. 205 

the passage, which is certainty striking, if not 
altogether conclusive. 

6 Kews. — The word neics is not, as man y imagine, 
derived from the adjective new. In former times 
(between the years 1595 and 1730) it was a preva- 
lent practice to put over the periodical publica- 
tions of the day the initial letters of the compass, 
thus — 

N 

E + W 

S 

importing that these papers contained intelligence 
from the four quarters of the globe ; and from this 
practice is derived the term "newspaper." : 

How delightfully is the statement put. 'The 
word is not, as many imagine, derived from the ad- 
jective new. 1 And what a condescending definition 
we are given of when ' former times ' existed, 
namely, from 1595 till 1730. We might, were we 
disposed to be captious, feel inclined to enquire 
what ' the periodical publications of the day ' were 
in 1595 ; but if the discoverer be right there must 
have been - periodical publications of the day ' long 
before then, since the word news, in its present form, 
and that of neiues, occurs far earlier in our litera- 
ture. Here is a sentence from 'Hugh Rhodes' 
Boke of Nurture, imprinted at London, 1577,' which 
gives the following advice as to servants : ' If they be 



206 WORD GOSSIP. 

tale-tellers or newes earyers reproue them sharpely, 
and if the y will not learne nor amende avo yde tliern 
thy house, for it is a great quyetnesse to have 
people of good behaviour in a house.' And not to 
mention the name of such a writer as Lord Berners, 
whose translation of Froissart was published in 
1523, whose grave was dug long before 'former 
times ' began in 1595, and who jet made use of 
the word ' news ' — what sort of guidance, other 
than a diametrically wrong one, can we expect 
from a writer, who, merely to support his prepos- 
terous theory, actually makes the East and West 
change places on his compass card ? 

My readers will have much mistaken the temper 
in which this little book has been written, if they 
think my ridicule of this absurd derivation a mere 
matter of spite or malice. I dare say I make as 
many mistakes as most men, and need as much of 
my readers' patience as any ; but it is surely right 
to knock such nonsense as is here propounded on 
the head at once, as tending to throw discredit on 
one of the most interesting pursuits with which 
our leisure can be occupied. 

It may, however, be expected that, after this 
tirade against the wrong, I should be prepared 
with the right conjecture ; and, indeed, it is desir- 
able to offer a remark upon the word in question, as 
its form seems to have misled many, and amongst 



ON SOME DISPUTED DERIVATIONS. 207 

them even one of our most popular writers on 
the subject of words. Dean Alford, in his enter- 
taining work, ' The Queen's English,' treats the 
word ' news ' as a plural form, though quite cor- 
rectly stating that it requires a verb in the sin- 
gular number. Now, the fact is, that though the 
word ends with an s it is in the singular, and is 
strictly analogous to the German neuter adjective 
employed as a substantive, Neues, 'a new thing.' 
' Es gibt Mchts Neues,' ' there is nothing of new 
— there is no news ' is an every day phrase ; and 
our early form of the word newes is exactly the 
same, with the only difference of being spelt, as the 
nature of our language requires, with the double 
instead of the single u. So that to use the expres- 
sion ' what is the news ?' with the verb in the sin- 
gular, is no concession to the custom of our speech, 
but a mere following of the due grammatical canon 
of the language. 

As a pleasing contrast with the specimen of ig- 
norant assumption we have been considering, I 
subjoin here a passage from the 'Athenaeum,' giving 
a very ingenious theory of derivation for the word 
regret, which may be right or wrong, but in any 
case has some reasonable grounds of scholarship 
to support it, and is not set forth as a mere wild 
and random conjecture : — - 

1 A new derivation of regret has heen proposed 



208 WOBD GOSSIP. 

by M. Chavee. The old derivations were — 1, 
The Latin requiritari, the frequentative of queri, 
to complain, the qu passing into g, as in the old 
French fregunder, from frequentare. 2. That pro- 
posed by Malm, the Latin gratum, whence the Por- 
tuguese grado, Provencal grat, French gret, gre, 
substantives ; and the Italian aggrandare, French 
agreer, from which a supposed Provencal regredar 
might be found. 3. Matzner's Gothic gret en, Anglo- 
Saxon graetan, to greet, weep. All these, as well 
as the etymologies of Menage and Le D achat, are 
wrong (says M. Chavee), because the writers have 
missed the primary meaning of the word. This 
the Wallon has preserved, and it is ' a re-growth, 
a fresh shoot,' an image borrowed from vegetable 
life. Li regret d?on mau, le regret d'un mal, is the 
return, or fresh access, of a malady which has not 
been felt for some time. Again, 

1 On a todis des regrets 
D'on man do moeis d'maiye,' 

people alwayshave returns of an illness taken in. the 
month of May. Regret is here the Latin recretum, 
that which grows again, which makes a new shoot, is 
re-born. The change from the Latin c to the French 
g is paralleled by the Old French segret, now secret, 
from the Latin secretum ; while the metaphor is 
plainly seen in the Italian ' Mi rincresce lo spiacer- 
vi,' I regret having displeased you ; though here re 



ON SOME DISPUTED DERIVATIONS. 209 

is prefixed to the compound increscere, instead of 
the simple verb crescere, as in ' regret.' 

Of course there are difficulties in the way of our 
accepting the new derivation, and ousting the old 
ones, of the word. Firstly, our own expression is 
' regret /or' not c regret of 9 something that is past ; 
but a still stronger objection is this, that if we 
adopt M. Chavee's view, we should expect to find 
the word used not merely for a re-access of pain 
and sorrow, but also for one of joy and gladness, 
which is quite contrary to any received sense of 
the word. The Italian illustration, however, given 
above, is nearly sufficient to outweigh these ob- 
jections, and certainly makes M. Chavee's theory 
respectable, if not conclusive. 



210 WOBD GOSSIP. 



CHAPTER XV. 

derivations (continued) . 

It does not occur to many people to enquire into 
the meaning of such a common verb as to ring, 
applied to a bell ; nor on enquiry does it at first 
seem easy to discover an origin for the word. In 
this sense it does not occur in languages cognate 
with our own, and yet it is so universally used as 
a synonym for an acute vibration of sound that it 
may seem hard to admit the fact of its being of 
very secondary origin. I will first give the ex- 
planations hitherto offered for the word, if only to 
show once more how nearly right etymologists 
may be and yet miss the mark, and even how 
they may be unconsciously right without under- 
standing clearly how or why. This is the deri- 
vation given by Richardson, in which he is fol- 
lowed by Webster and others : — 

4 Ring, v. from Anglo-Saxon ring-an, Tiring un ; 
Dutch, ringJien ; Swedish, ringa ; jpulsare, to beat. 



BEBIVA TIONS— continued. 2 1 1 

Lye suggests from ring, annulus, as applied to a 
metallic instrument of music of that circular form, 
and which, when beaten, returned argutum et stre~ 
perum sonum. 1 

Now though the truth be, that in all probability 
the ' instrument of music of that circular form ' 
never existed save in Lye's imagination, and that, 
knowing of such an instrument as a triangle, he 
evolved from analogy a possible (and therefore 
probable, for nothing possible is improbable to a 
thorough word grubber) musical ring, still I feel 
tolerably certain that the derivation from ring 
(annulus) is perfectly right. Lye should have 
acted on the system laid down by the old judge 
in advising a young one, — ' Give your judgment, 
but don't give your reasons ; the judgment may be 
right, the reasons are pretty sure to be wrong ;' 
and then none could complain of his derivation. 
But the fact is, the roots offered (or rather, the 
root, for there is but one) do not bear the signi- 
fication of heat, pulsare, at all ; their meaning is 
that of wrestle, luctari, which sense is still retained 
in our word to wring, spelt with a w, in strict 
accordance with the true Anglo-Saxon form, 
which is cavalierly ignored in Richardson. 

But how am I to reconcile my hint that Rich- 
ardson was nearly right in giving a sense (not 
an etymology) equivalent to heating, with my 
p2 



212 WORD GOSSIP. 

other hint that Lye was right without knowing it 
in deriving the word from the substantive ring ? 
Why, thus : the word is taken from the shape of 
the ancient door-handle, which was a knocker in 
itself, formed in the most simple way in the form 
of a ring, a form which, however modified, is com- 
mon to onr own day. In ancient times the legend 
4 knock and ring ' on a hall door would have been 
a glaring pleonasm, for the two processes were 
identical. It was only after the use of door-bells 
was introduced that they became distinct, up to 
which time the knocker itself was indeed a bell, 
but not in the metallic sense we now assign to it. 
The original meaning of bell is the barking of a 
dog, and hence came to be given to any other 
succession of sharp sudden sounds on a single 
note, such as either knocking at a door or the 
sounding of a bell. Our word clap has exactly the 
same origin (still observable in the German words 
bellen and Maffen, signifying the barking of dogs), 
and we may do well to note, in passing, the analogy 
between a bell and the clapper or tongue which 
makes it sound. Thus Gower says (' Confessio 
Amantis,' B. I.), — 

* There maie nothing his tonge daunt, 
That he ne clappeth as a belle, 
Wherof if thou wolt that I telle 
It is behouelj for to here.' 



BEBIVA TIONS— continued. 2 1 3 

We may go still further with analogies, which, 
though they may not absolutely prove, at all 
events can support the theory that our use of the 
word ring as applied to sound is taken originally 
from the noise made with a door-handle or ring 
to attract attention to the person making it. The 
simplest door-handle, knocker, and latch were all 
combined in a single ring ; the sound produced 
was in character similar to the barking of a dog, 
and took the name of bell from that fact ; the clink 
of a bell (a word which we might imagine formed 
by onomatopoeia) is the English and German 
klinke* a door-latch ; and the word knell, which 
we associate at present only with actual metallic 
bells, is the German word knall, a detonation, a 
sudden clap, an expression most appropriate in 
times when in the West, as still in the East, 
worshippers were called to prayer by the knocking 
of mallets upon wood. Once more, we have the 
bobbin (French bobine) applied to the latch-handle 
of a door, as we know from poor Riding Hood's 
grandmother telling the wolf to c pull the bobbin, 

* ' Well heard Kiddie all this sore constraint, 

And longed to know the cause of his complaint ; 
Then creeping close, behind the wicket's clinke 
Privily he peeped out through a chinke ; 
Yet not so privily but the fox him spied, 
For deceitful meaning is double-eyed.' 

Chaucer Shepherd's Calendar, May. 



214 WOBD GOSSIP. 

and the latch will go up ;' and we may put side by 
side with it the otherwise inexplicable term used 
in bell ringing, 'a triple bob major.' 

But before we leave this subject I must call 
attention to two statements on this point needing 
some explanation. The one is that the introduction 
of door-bells caused a distinction between knocking 
and ringing at a door. For it may be said, bells 
were used in the time of the early Jews as parts 
of dress, and familiar to many nations before the 
English language was ever formed. And this is 
perfectly true, but door-bells were not known, and 
for a very good reason. English houses were 
build ed of one story, without even a basement 
(which was of fourteenth century introduction), 
and the different portions of a house had different 
doors opening on a courtyard, so that admission 
could always be obtained by knocking at the 
door when people wished to enter, without the 
necessity of communication with persons at a dis- 
tance. Evidence may also be required to justify 
my other statement that the door-ring was used a 
a knocker or bell, and I therefore adduce the fol- 
lowing remarkable illustration from Burger's well- 
known ballad of ' Leonora :' — 

' Und aussen, horch ! ging's trap, trap, trap, 
Als wie von Bosses Hufen, 



DERIVATIOXS—coxiisinsD. 215 

*Undklirrend stieg ein Keiter ab 

An cles Gfelanders Stufen ; 
Und horch ! und horch ! der Pfortenring 
Granz lose, leise, klinglingling.' 

If my kind readers are not tired of my ringing 
so many changes on the word and its analogies, 
they will bear with me while I lead them a little 
farther by another illustration. I have said that 
hellen and hlaffen (middle low German, clappeii) 
both mean to bark. Let ns now take the word 
clccpdisJi* a sort of rattle, which lazars infected 
with leprosy were obliged to use to keep off stran- 
gers from contagion ; and see by this quotation 
from ' Verholen Minne ' that this was also spoken 
of as a hell. Here are the lines : — 

'Die dagelijks min willetje doen 
En klinken de lazerus bellen.' 

One more evidence of the early identity of 
knocking and ringing may be supplied by the 
origin petto, I beat, for a peal of bells. Compare 
Terence, Adelphi, 5, 3, 2 — ' Quisnam a me pepulit 
tarn graviter fores?' 

1 And when trimmed up 
To the height, as thou imaginest, in mine eyes, 
A leper with a clapdisli (to give notice 
He is infectious) in respect to thee 
Appears a young Adonis.' 

Massinger, Parliament of Love, Act ii, scene 2. 



216 WOBD GOSSIP. 

Enough, however, of speculation on a matter 
which however interesting as a conjecture, I do 
not pretend to consider capable of any perfect 
proof. 

Have we got in the dictionaries the right deriva- 
tion for the word jumble ? I think not. Richard- 
son says, ' Perhaps from the French combler (Lat. 
cumulare), to heap up, to throw up in a heap or 
mass ; or rather a diminutive of jump. Chaucer 
writes j ombre, and Sir T. More jumper ; the one 
equivalent to jumble, the other to jump, &c.' I 
suspect the origin of the word is to be found in 
the Italian giumella, what can be grasped in two 
hands, the natural course adopted for the hasty 
and untidy removal of a number of objects to- 
gether. 

Some writers, again, give themselves much 
trouble about the word awk%vard, which, indeed, to 
be consistent with itself, should not be of the most 
obvious origin. It has been interpreted as equiv- 
alent to & wayward, which certainly is an out-of-the 
way, (not to say, as a punster would, a wayward) 
derivation. Richardson offers the following ety- 
mology and definition : — ' If awk be not a corrup- 
tion, its origin may be deduced from the Dutch, 
aver-recht (contrarius recto : praster rectum) ; 
thus, aver-recht, aurrechl, aurclit, aurc, awk, or aivk, 
to which add the termination ward, and awkward 



BERIVA TIONS— continued. 2 1 7 

"will inean " looking from the right." If awkward 
be the proper simple term, it may be the Anglo- 
Saxon A cyrred (ac-^/rrecZ), past participle of the verb 
Acyrren, to turn; and thus mean turned, averted? 

His definition is better than his etymology, 
' Turned out of the right or straight line, perverted 
or perverse, indirect ; crooked, clumsy, inelegant.' 

Is it not more simple to deduce it from the An- 
glo-Saxon ecg, edge, akin to which we have the 
German ech, a corner, and interpret the word as 
meaning edgeways, diagonal, and so awkward, in 
the sense in which we can apply the term, for in- 
stance, to the motion of a crab ? 

This very same sense, I may observe in passing, 
is the proper one of our word queer, which we use 
in a different sense altogether from cross, a term in 
some respects its synonym. 

I suspect that the word sterling has a double 
derivation, according to the sense in which it is 
taken. The expression ' pounds sterling' is fully 
explained by the often quoted passages from 
Holinshed and Camden, showing how the money 
of German merchants (called Easterlings from 
their geographical relation to England), being un- 
usually pure, was made the standard for English 
coinage. But the other sense in which we use it, 
that of unflmching, resolute, uncompromising, may 
have a more direct origin than a figurative appli- 



218 WORD GOSSIP. 

cation of the currency idea points to. It may come 

from, or be cognate with, the old high German 

sturilinc, a (young) warrior ; a word which certainly 

passed into the French tongne as a synonym for 

a brave combatant, as appears from the following 

quotation cited by Diezt from Girart de Rossilho, — 

' Acqi moro a glai tant esturlenc 
E tan noble vassal i adelenc' 

Etiquette, again, is a word which has come no 

less than twice into our language. The word 

originally signifies a pointed stick, just such, no 

doubt, as a gardener may fix in a flower-pot, after 

writing upon it some singularly distorted botanical 

name. We have but to replace the old French s 

before the first t in the word to see how closely 

cognate estiquette is with stick (in fact, the word in 

multitudinous forms pervades all the Romanic and 

Teutonic languages). From this first meaning it 

came in the form of ticket to signify the same thing 

as label (a word whose derivation I have already 

treated), and has been for ages naturalized among 

us in this form. But it has entered our language 

a second time, in its French shape, etiquette, to 

express another idea, namely, that of accordance 

with polished manners and behaviour, and in this 

sense entirely disowns connection with its former 

self, ticket. A lady or gentleman may say ' that's 

not etiquette ' without exciting remark ; but to 



DEBIVA Tl ONS— continued. 2 1 9 

say l that's not the ticket,' used, at least in iin- 
slangy days, to he considered as an irredeemable 
vulgarism. Cowper, however, in the third book 
of the ' Task,' uses the English form of the word 
in the French sense, so far as it refers to the gain- 
ing of admission into society : — 

' Well dressed, well bred, 
"Well equipaged, is ticket good enough 
To pass us readily through every door.' 

We may mark an analogy to the French etiquette 
(so far as both terms refer to the making up of a 
parcel) in the French word cachet, a seal, used in 
such a phrase as ' 9a n'a pas du cachet,' i there's 
no style about it : ' a metaphor which we use our- 
selves, though in less concise expression, when we 
speak, for instance, of a person's manners bearing 
the stamp of good breeding. 

The almost universal mistake made as to the 
derivation of the word cleiv (commonly spelt clue) 
gives us a curious example of the natural tendency 
of etymologists to seek a root for a term not ac- 
cording to its structure, bat according to their idea 
of its sense. Our common notion of a clue is a 
thread, by following which a person is enabled to 
find his way in safety through a maze or labyrinth. 
The earliest notion of it is suggested to us all, as 
children, by the legend of Queen Eleanor and Fair 



220 WORD GOSSIP. 

Rosamond. Who has not, as a child, pictured to 
himself the angry queen threading her way through 
the maze which surrounded the bower of the 
doomed beauty, and thought how happy it would 
have been if the thread had broken in her hand, 
and left her, mazed and lost, unable to complete 
her fell design ? It seems so natural to associate 
the word clue with thread, that most people would 
immediately accept the derivation supplied by our 
principal dictionary- makers, and believe the word 
derived from ' Saxon, cleow, dive ; Dutch, hlowen ; 
Latin, globus.' 

1 The word signifies a ball or a lump. . . . 
Hence — 1. A ball of thread', 2. The thread that; 
forms a ball ; 3. The thread that is used to guide 
a person in a labyrinth.' This is Webster's treat- 
ment, amplified from Richardson. But how far- 
fetched such a derivation is we may easily see by 
reflecting that, as a ball, the thread could never 
form a guide, that only when the form of the ball 
was utterly lost could the present sense apply to 
the thread, which might have formed the ball 
before it was unwound. The very spelling of the 
word, which these writers have correctly given as 
cleiv, instead of clue, might have led them to think 
of a simpler origin. The word is, in fact, the 
French clef, a key, from the Latin clams, as becomes 
still more clearly apparent if we keep in mind 



DERIVATIONS— continued. 221 

that our modern w used to have the force of v, a 
fact which, by the way, may also show that our 
old friend, Sam Weller, in saying ' Villiam ' for 
' William,' was speaking in an ancient and decayed 
idiom, rather than in a late corruption of our 
modern tongue. 

The derivation of the word Maze is a matter of 
difficulty. So far as the sense of flame is con- 
cerned, the German word hlasen, to blow, is offered, 
pointing to the Anglo-Saxon blcesan, as a reason- 
able origin ; but then we must remember that the 
German and kindred languages do not use it at all 
in this sense. It seems more reasonable to refer it 
to the same root as the German hlass, pale, of light 
colour ; which will explain all the senses in which 
we use it. So a ' blaze ' in a horse's forehead 
(German Blcisse} means a patch of white ; so, again, 
we speak of blazing a tree — that is, striking off a 
slice of bark as a mark, leaving of course a light 
patch where the bark was removed.* 

We often find that the acceptance of an erro- 
neous origin for a word will actually cause a mis- 
conception and even a misspelling of its proper 
form. Thus the dictionary words Bat-fowler, Bat- 

* It might be worth while to consider whether this sense 
of decortication might not suggest a better derivation for the 
French word blesser, to wound, than the unsatisfactory sur- 
mises which hare hitherto been made by etymologists. 



222 WORD GOSSIP. 

fowling liave arisen, though I feel sure the practice 
throughout England is universally called Bat-fold- 
ing. It sounds reasonable enough to call any system 
of catching birds fowling, and there would be a 
natural impulse on the part of a man of education 
(who had never witnessed the process) to say that 
the netting of birds at night should be called Bat- 
fowling, rather than Bat-folding. Two difficulties, 
however, stand in his way. Firstly, the process is 
universally called by the latter term ; and secondly, 
though he might account for the fowling, the bat * 
would be hard to explain, except on the supposition 
that the fowlers sometimes caught a bat, or on the 
theory that because bats fly by night every other 
creature flying, or made to fly by night, partook in 
some sort of their nature. The accuracy, however, 
of the expression bat folding becomes obvious when 
we regard the instrument with which it is ac- 
complished. This is a net stretched upon a rude 
frame, consisting of two parts which, when opened 
out, are about of the same shape as a large paper 
kite or as a gigantic racket, or bat, and is hinged 
at the top, the ends at the bottom being in the 
operator's hands. It is laid open against an ivy- 
grown wall or tree, the noise caused by which pro- 
ceeding rouses the birds from their roosting places, 

* The suggestion that the word should be bird-fowling is, 
of course, refuted by its pleonastic form. 



DEBIT A TIONS—coxtixvtli). 223 

and the net being then closed or folded, the victims 
are caught in its meshes. If my readers dislike 
this origin of the word bat they may refer it, if 
they choose, to the folding of wing practised by 
the whole bat tribe. 

I shall conclude by giving the derivations of two 
words, vrhich seem to me to have been hitherto 
mistaken, and which, as belonging to our present 
subject, I venture to repeat here from an article 
on Minute English Etymology, contributed by me 
to the * Contemporary Review' for July, 1867. The 
words in question are laudanum and saunter. 

As to the first, its origin has given rise to many 
conjectures. One of our latest writers has referred 
it to anodyne, considering it a corrupt Latinised 
form of the Greek vwlwov, an imagined neuter 
adjective from vtjcvvia, absence of pain. I have 
also known an ingenious effort to derive the word 
from the verb Xi/yeiv, in a causative sense, to make 
to cease, and olvirj, pain, which would be a better 
explanation of the nature and effect of laudanum 
than the other ; but, after all, the best to be said 
for either of these conjectures (for they are noth- 
ing more) is. that they are not so preposterous as 
that pitched on by Webster, who derives laudanum 
from laudan&um, as meriting praise.* 

* It is fair to say that this conjecture has been expunged 
in the last edition of Webster's Dictionary. 



224 WORD GOSSIP. 

Now the fact is that the form laudanum never 
was Latin at all, corrupt or pure ; but ledanum and 
ladamim are both used by Pliny, the latter in the 
passage - ladano sistitur alvus,' showing one of the 
main modern employments of tincture of opium to 
be assigned to what was called ladanum in his day. 
He further describes the nature of the extract, and 
the origin of the word, as both coming from the 
Greek word Xfjdor, a shrub growing in Cyprus, 
from which ledanum was made. He explains his 
use of the form ladanum, by stating that the shrub 
was called lada by a barbarism, ' ladam vocant 
talero. barbaro nomine.' The plant was, in fact, 
as Livy shows, the gum cistus (Gistus Creticus). 
Now every gum at one time was called a balsam 
or balm, which word, by figurative use, has come 
to bear the general meaning of anodyne. The 
tincture of opium in process of time having become 
possibly the most effectual, certainly the most 
general sedative, usurped to itself first the office, 
and then the name of one particular sedative, much 
in the same way as, in English and German, the 
word tea has, within the last couple of centuries, 
arbitrarily taken the place of decoction, as in the 
forms beef tea, Camillentliee, &c. Pliny was con- 
tent to go back to the Greek form, thinking any 
other a simple barbarism ; but it is interesting 
to note that the Greek \f\lov was but a softening, 



DERIVA T10NS— continued. 225 

after all, of the Persian form Iddan, the long a 
in which resumed its rightful place in the Latin 
word, not by barbaric error, but by true linguistic 
instinct. 

"With regard to the word saunter, I must point 
the attention of some of my readers to the peculiar 
force of the letter s, as a prefix to many English 
words. It is an intensive and protractive prefix, 
and a few instances of its effect may be interesting. 

Thus s-melt, s-mash, s-lack, s-lush, s-weat, s-nip 
are intensifications of melt, mash, lax, lush, wet, 
and nip ; s-neeze, s-narl, and s-nore, display the 
same sort of relation to English nose, and Latin 
nar, nostril; and a vast number of less obvious 
instances may be found on reference to an English 
vocabulary by anyone whom the subject may in- 
terest. The knowledge that such a force exists in 
a single prefixed letter is in itself a suggestion of 
help to an enquirer puzzled, let us say, to discover 
the etymology of any word beginning with s. Let 
us, then, with this much of preface, explain the 
word ' saunter ' by the use of this plain principle. 
It may be worth while to show the explanations 
already offered of the term, all of them doubtless 
plausible, but all at the same time merely con- 
jectural, and resting upon no sort of philological 
or historical evidence. Skinner derives it from 
French sauter, to leap ; explaining our sense of 

Q 



226 WORD GOSSIP. 

saunter by the cognate word desultory. The error 
of this view is evident from the consideration that 
the arbitrary n in the middle of the word must 
thus be left entirely unaccounted for. Thomson 
invents a low Latin form, segnitare, which is inge- 
nious, but nothing more. Others refer it to the 
French sans terre, landless, an interpretation which 
only explains the sound, not the sense of the word. 
Archbishop Trench, following an idea mentioned 
by Lye, says : — 

' " Sauntercr," derived from "la Sainte Terre," is one who 
visits the Holy Land. At first a deep and holy enthusiasm 
drew men thither. . . . By degrees, however, as the enthu- 
siasm spent itself, the making of this pilgrimage degenerated 
into a mere worldly fashion, and every idler that liked 
strolling about better than performing the duties of his call- 
ing, assumed the Pilgrim's staff, and proclaimed himself 
bound for the Holy Land ; to which very often he never set 
out. And thus the word forfeited the more honourable 
meaning it may have once possessed, and the " saunterc r " 
camo to signify one idly and unprofitably wasting his timo 
loitering here and there, with no fixod purpose or aim. 

This, in its turn, is a picturesque derivation ; but 
if such a term ever became proverbial, we should 
be justified in expecting to find something analo- 
gous to our word in its natural language, the 
French, where nothing of the kind exists. 

* Trench on the Study of Words, p. 57. 



DERIVA TIONS-coxtixusd. 227 

But if we assign to the first letter s of the word 
' saunter ' its natural protective force as a prefix, 
we come to the true origin of the term. We have 
the word aunter left us, which is the early English 
form of our word adventure, both as verb and sub- 
stantive. Thus we have the old metrical romance, 
' The Anturs of Arthur at the Tarne Wathelan ;' 
and we find the verb form used by Chaucer in the 
Reeve's Tale, v. 4208:— 

* And when this jape is tald another day, 
I shal be halden a daffe or a cokenay ; 
I wol arise and auntre it by my fay.' 

So, again, we find this sense of the word illus- 
trated by the context in Hudibras (pt. iii. c. 1), 
where it is applied to an equestrian : — 

i By sauntering still on some adventure^ 
And growing to thy horse a centaur. 

Thus, to saunter is to go about waiting for adven- 
tures, denoting the Micawber-like expectation of 
some indefinite thing * turning up,' and has come 
with special fitness to be applied to the listless, 
unbraced, purposeless lounging of the idle man, 
who, without the energy to seek excitement, is 
content to hang like a half- dead worm, a bait for 
chance currents to toss, for circumstances to nibble 
at, too often for mischief to seize upon, as he 



228 WOBJD GOSSIP. 

abandons himself, in the full sense of the word, ad 
ventura, to the things that come to him, or good or 
bad, whatsoever they may be, without an effort or 
a care to meet and match events as he was placed 
upon this earth to do. 



INDEX. 



ABO 

^BOMINABLE, 126 

Abominate, 128 
According, harmonizing, 131 
Adder, 43 
Adventure, 227 

Affinity and derivation of 
words, difference between, 16 
Aim, 87 

Airy for area, 154 
Alcoholism, 185 
Alienist, 186 
Alligator, 24, 38 
'All in a clutter,' 167 
' All in ahoo,' 167 
' Amendable to the law,' 188 
Anodyne, 224 
Anon, 134 
Apple, 41 

Apple-tart and apple-pie, 5 0-52 
Apron, 42 
Arquebus s, 137 
Aspect, 131 
Astonished, 119 
Astounded, 119 
Augur, 126 
Auspices, 126, 127 
Awkward, 216 



"RACK-GAMMON, 26, 81 

Ball, 132 
Ballad, 132, 133 



BKO 

Ballare, 132 

Ballet, 132 

Balsam, or balm, 224 

Bat-folding, 222 

Bat-fowler, 221 

1 Beating about the bush,' 168 

'Be, I,' 'Be you,' 151, 152 

Beetle and calender, 144 -^ 

Bell, 212 

Best, 139 

Best man, 127, 128 

Better, 139 

Blaze, 221 

Blind to your own interest, 

113 
Blot, 82-84 
Blunderbuss, 137 
Bobbin, latch-handle, 213 
Bob-major, 214 
Bombastic, 49 
Bonheur, 129 
Bosh ! 143, 144 
Brat, 201 
Brawn, 26, 27 
' Break down ' the safeguards 

of the constitution, 113 
' Break up ' a letter, 157 
Bressumer or Brestsummer, 

145 
Brilliant, in music, 131 
Brougham, 29 
Brown Bess, 137 



230 



INDEX. 



BUG 

Bug and Norfolk-Howard, 29- 

31 
Buffoon, buffoonery, 136, 137 
' Burke an enquiry,' 29 
Bus and omnibus, 56 
'But what,' 101 
Buxom, 49 



(JACKET, 219 

Calender and beetle, 144 
Calumny, 60 
Canard, 197-199 
Cant, 59 

'Casting' of lots, 130 
Challenge, 69 
Chance, 130 
Chandler, chandlery, 39 
Charlatan, 135 
Chat and snack, 8 
Choir, 132, 133 
Chorus, 132 
Clap, 212 
Clapdish, 215 
Clarence, 29 
Clem, 162 
Clew, 219 
Clothes-horse, 146 
Clue, 219 

' Cobweb morning/ 167 
Codger, 201 
Condign, 106 
Consider, 130 

' Countrymen ' for ' ladies,' 107 
Cram, 143 
Cubit, 124 
Cue, queue, 74-81 
Curb or kerb, 161 
Curtsey, 10, 11 



J)APPLE, 45 

Davenport, 29 



ETI 

1 Dead ' to every claim of na- 
tural affection, 113 

1 Decoction ' supplanted by 
' tea,' 224 

Deducated, 180 

Defiance, 62 

Demoralize, 188-190 

Demur, demurrer, 61 

1 Departure, to take one's,' 110 

Derivation and affinity of 
words, difference between, 16 

— common errors as to deri- 
vation, 17 

Descent and kinship of words, 
difference between, 15 

Desirability, 183 

' Devo-teepot, 178 

Diamond, 44 

Dinner, 163, note 

Dipsomania, 185 

Directly, 134 

Disaster, 131 

Distrust, 61, 62 

Doff, 160 

* Domesticated, thoroughly/ 
187 

Don, 160 

Dowse, ' dowse the glim/ 157, 
159 

D'Oyley, 29 

1 Dumbledore in a warming- 
pan/ 166 

Dumbledrane. 166 



'TTITHER' for 'any/ 103 
t±J Ell, 124 
Ell-bow, 124 
Enamel, 46 
Enchant, 59 
Engross, 88 
Enlightenment, 183 
E%uette, 218 



INDEX. 



231 



"PAIK, 25 

Fathom, 125 
'Feathering your nest' with 

your master's bottles, 113 
Fellow, 202 
Fiddle-de-dee! 143 
Filch, 202 
' Flashy ' song, 131 
Flunkey, 199-203 
Fowling, 222 

Frensh-am for Frens-ham, 155 
Fugleman, 200 
Furlough, 42 



QAMBADO, 25 

Game, making, 26 
G-amen, 26 
Gammon, 26 
Gechwister, English word 

wanted for, 108 
Glance, 161 
Glim, 160 

Good, better, best, 139 
Gratefulness, 183 
Guess, 15 
Gulliver, 34 



TTABERDASHER, 41 
' Habilitated,' 188 
Ham, 26 

Hans-Wurst, 136 
Happiness, 130 
Harmonizing, colours, 131 
Helder, 162 
4 Hold a ball,' 74 
' Hollering-time,' 164 
Hollo, to, ] 63 
'Hope for a season bade the 

world farewell,' 114 
Horoscope, 129 
Hour, evil, 126, 128 



LUB 

Humble-bee, or bumble-bee, 
166 



JLL-STARRED, 131 
Immediately, 134 
Inaugurate, 127 
Incantation, 59 
Inch, 122 
' Incoming ground ' for down 

hill, 166 
Indignation, 54 



JACK-PUDDING, 136 

Jealousy, 53 
Jig, 133 
Jumble, 216 



|£ERB or curb, 161 

Kinship and descent of 
words, difference between, 1 5 
Kleptomania, 185 
Knell, 213 



T.ABEL, 57 

Lackey, 200-203 
Laid, lay, 96, 97 
Laudanum, 223 
Lease, to, or glean, 139 
Lecture, 48 
Leer for hungry, 162 
Less and lesser, 104, 105 
Light, as bad, 184, note 
' Light changed its hue retiring 

from its shroud,' ,16 
'Loud' waistcoat, 132 
' Lousing, or loosing, time,' 163 
Louver, 39 
Lubber-boards, 39 



232 



INDEX 



MAC 

TV/T ACADAMIZE, 29 

XJIJm Malheur, 129 

Marg, meadow daisy, 170 

Martinet, 28 

Mask, 67 

' Mentecaptische Junglinge/ 

177 
Merry- An drew, 136 
Method, 55 
Mince-tart, 51 
* Most,' instead of ' more,' 105 



JJAG, to tease, 164 

Naperon, 43 
Napkin, table, 43 
' Neither' for ' none,' 103 
Netifie, 176 
News, 204-207 
Nick, nickname, 164 
Noration, 37 
Now, just now, 135 
'Number, an innumerable,' 104 
Nuncle and uncle, 24 



f)BNOXIOUS, 55 
Off-locked, 157 
Omen, 128 
Omniversality, 179 
1 Open to hear,' and * open 

curates,' 108 
Orange, 40, 41 
Oration, 37 
Orbicular, 178 
OuyKia, 122 
Ounce, 122 
Out-asked, 157 
Overhope, 173 



PACE, 124 

Parson, 65, 68 



RES 

Patter, 60 

'Peal' of bells, 215 

Period, 84 

Periodical, 84 

Person, 24, 65 

Personate, 67 

Personify, 67 

Personnel, English word 

wanted for, 181 
Pin, 21 
Pinafore, 43 
Point-blank, 86, 87 
1 Poisoning ' the minds of the 

jury, 113 
Pommel, 46 
Pouce, 123 
' Pramble talk, 168 
Presently, 134 
Priest, 69 

Puisne judge, 162 note 
Punctual, 58 
Puny, 162, note 



QUACK, 135 

^ Quagmire, 199 

Queer, 217 

Querulity, 183 

1 Quitting time, 163 



"PANEDEEK, versus Rein- 
deer, 191 
Rather for sooner, 162 
Read, to, 138 
Reckless, 55 
Reek, 162 
Reeve, 140 
Regret, 207 

Reindeer, or Ranedeer, 195 
Reliable, 183 
Repair, 89 
Resentment, 53 



INDEX. 



233 



RES 

'Residential estate/ 187 
Revenge, 54 
Rich, 26 
Ring, to, 210 
Rook, the bird, 163 
Rook, smoke, 162 
Rooky, 163 



g, the letter, as a prefix, 225 
'Saddled' with a worth- 
less horse, 112 

Salient, 85 

Saunter, 223, 225, 226 

Sermon, 48 

Secret, 208 

' Shadow to Thy people shine/ 
114 

Shave, a hoax, 197 

Sheriff, 140 

' Showl ' dialectic for ' shovel/ 
156 

Simony, 29 

Sinister, 128 

Skewer and secure, 32 

Sleepers of railways, 145 

Slender, 184, note 

Slim, 184, 185 

Slipstring, 203 

' Smell a rat,' 55 

Smelt, 46, 47 

Snack and chat, 8 

Soldier, 203 

Sot, 58 

Span, 124 

Spike, 22 

Spurs, winning his, 112 

' Stab/ the administration of 
justice, 113 

Starve, 52 

Sterling, 217 

Stuff, 142 

Stunned, 119 



UKT 



' Style about it,' 219 
Sumpter-mule, 146 
Synonym, 135 



rpABBY CAT, 45 

Tabinet, 45 
Tables, turning the, 81 
' Tailors, nine, make a man,' 73 
Tale, tell a, 70 
Talented, 183 
Tart, 51, 52 

' Tea ' for ' decoction/ 224 
Telegram, 173 
Tally-ho! 19 
Tell, tell a story, 70 
' They' for 'them' or ' that,' 151 
Thimble, 134 
Thresh-old, 154 
Thumb, rule of, 123, note 
Thunderstricken, 120 
Thunderstruck, 119 
Ticket, 218. ' Not the ticket,' 

219 
Tidy, 59 
Till, 27 
Tippler, 58 
Toadeater, 136 
Toe, 168 
Toll, 71, 72 

'Tone' of a picture, 131 
1 Toning ' of a photograph. 131 
Towel-horse, 146 
Tradition, 52 
Trial, 62 
Trooping, 106 
Twaddle, 143 
Two, a pair, 168 



TTMPIRE, 23 

Uncia, 122, 123 
Unfair, 24 



234 



INDEX. 



VAN 

VAN and caravan, 56 

Ventilate, 183 
' Verbum ' and ' vermin,' 
Vouchsafe, 18 
Vraisemblable, English 
wanted for, 181 



word 



"^yALTH-AM for Walt-ham, 

155 
Wanhope, 173 
Wast and wert, 102 
Wend, to, 111 
Wert for wast, 102 



ZAN 

Wist, to, 103 
Woodroof, 140 
Wreak, 55 
Wren, 140-2. ' 
all birds/ 141 
Wren -boys, 141 
Wring, to, 211 



The king of 



YOUE SELF, 153 

2 ANY, 136 



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expectations to be perhaps dis- 
appointed by the work itself. Now, 
however, that it has been adopted 
by other sponsors, who are able 
to justify the propriety of the name 
chosen, there is no reason why the 
same book should appear under 
two different designations. It has, 
therefore, been decided that the 
title of the French edition shall 
be prefixed to the original English 
one, which is retained, that past 
purchasers may not be misled by 
the change ; and as the translation 
is issued at a lower rate than the 
original work, the publishers have 
determined to make a correspond- 
ing reduction in the price of their 
edition to an amount which had 
indeed been contemplated at the 
time of its first appearance. 



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The THEORY and PRACTICE of BANKING. By the same Author. 
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ELEMENTS of MARITIME INTERNATIONAL LAW. By William 
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PAPERS on MARITIME LEGISLATION ; with a Translation of the 
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A DICTIONARY, Practical, Theoretical, and Historical, of Com- 
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The LAW of NATIONS Considered as Independent Political Com- 
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INDEX. 



v's Modem Cookery 27 

:k's Residence in Japan 22 

is on Formation of Christendom 20 

ie Guide (The) 22 

xsleben's Maximilian in Mexico .... 5 

BuTa Manual of the Metalloids 12 

»ld's Manual of English Literature.... 7 

■tt's Elements of Physics 11 

dines Cami 25 

mn holidays of a Country Parson . . 8 

's Treasury of Bible Knowledge 19 

v's Essays, by Whately 5 

- Life and Letters, by Speddino 5 

Works 6 

on the Emotions and Will 9 

on the Senses and Intellect 9 

on the Study of Character 9 

Ball's Alpine Guide 22 

ard's Drawing from Nature 16 

bow's Rents and Tillages 18 

n Tracks 22 

^r's Charicles and Gallus 23 

ioven's Letters 4 

by's Sanskrit Dictionary 8 

y's Journals and Correspondence .... 4 

rdBook(The) 26 

;'s Treatise on Brewing 28 

cley and Friedlander's German and 

lish Dictionary 8 

e's Rural Sports 25 

Veterinary Art 26 

t's Week at the Land's End 23 

:'s Epigrams 9 

\e on Screw Propeller 17 

re's Catechism of the Steam Engine.. 17- 

Handbook of Steam Ensdne 17 

Treatise on the Steam Engine ... 17 

Examples of Steam, Air, and Gas 

ines 17 

. ;er's Family Shakspeare 25 

I Manual for Naval Cadets 27 

ley-Moore's Six Sisters of the Valleys 23 
de's Dictionary of Science, Literature, 

Art .... 13 

- s (CO Education of the Feelings 10 

Philosophy of Necessity 10 

on Force 10 

ox on Food and Digestion 27 

>w's Glossary of Mineralogy 11 

- e's (Sir C. B.) Works 15 

— Constitutional History 2 

ve's Exposition 39 Articles 18 

e's History of Civilization 2 

; Hints to Mothers 28 

Maternal Management of Children. 28 

y's (Baron) Ancient Egypt 3 



Bunsex's (Baron) God in History 3 

Memoirs -. * 

Buxsen (E.De) on Apocrypha 20 

's Keys of St. Peter 20 

Burke's Vicissitudes of Families 5 

Burton's Christian Church 3 



Cabinet Lawyer 

Calvert's Wife's Manual 

, Cates's Biographical Dictionary 

i Cats' and Farlie's Moral Emblems 

Chesxey's Indian Polity > 

j Chorale Book for England 

j Christian Schools and Scholars 

! Clough's Lives from Plutarch 

! Colenso (Bishop) on Pentateuch and Book 

of Joshua 

j Collixs's Horse-Trainer's Guide 

; Commonplace Philosopher in Town and 

Country 

Co.mngtox's Chemical Analysis 

-Translation of Virgil's JEneid 



Coxtaxseau's Pocket French and English 
Dictionary = . 5 

Practical ditto 

Coxybeare and Howson's Life and Epistles 
of St. Paul 

Cook on the Acts 

Coplaxd's Dictionary of Practical Medicine 

Coclthart's Decimal Interest Tables 

Counsel and Comfort from a City Pulpit .. 

Cox's Manual of Mythology 

Tales of the Great Persian War 

Tales from Greek Mythology 

Tales of the Gods and Heroes 

Tales of Thebes and Argos 

Tales from Ancient Greece 

Cresy's Encyclopaedia of Civil Engineering 

j Critical Essays of a Country Parson 

j Crowe's History of France 

! Crump on Banking, Currency , & Exchanges 



Dart's Hiad of Homer 25 

D' Aubigne's History of the Reformation in 

the time of Calyi> 2 

Davidsox's Introduction to New Testament 19 

Dayman's Dante's Divina Commeaia 25 

Dead Shot (The), by Mar ssmax 26 

De Burgh's Maritime International Law.. 27 

De la Rive's Treatise on Electricity 11 

De Morgax on Matter and Spirit 9 

De Tocqceville's Democracy in America. . 2 
Disraeli's Speeches on Parliamentary Re- 
form 6 

Dobsox ontheOx 27 

DovEonStorms 10 

Dyer's City ot Rome 2 



30 



NEW WORKS published by LONGMANS and CO. 



Eastlare's Hints on Household Taste .... 17 

Edwards' Shi pmaster 's Guide 27 

Elements of Botany 13 

Ellicott's Commentary on Ephesians .... 19 

Lectures on Life of Christ 19 

Commentary on Galatians 19 

■ Pastoral Epist... 19 

Philippians,&c. 19 

Thessalonians... 19 

Eng el's Introduction to National Music .. 15 

Essays and Reviews 20 

on Religion and Literature, edited 

by Manning, First and Second Series.. 20 

Ewald's History of Israel 19 



Fairbairn on Iron Shipbuilding 17 

Fairhairn's Application of Cast and 

Wrought Iron to Building 17 

Information for Engineers... 17 

■ Treatise on Mills & Mill work 17 

Far rar's Chapters on Language 7 

Felkin on Hosiery and Lace Manufactures 18 

Ffoulkes's Christendom's Divisions 20 

Fliedner's (Pastor) Life 5 

Francis's Fishing Book 26 

(Sir P.) Memoir and Journal .... 4 

Friends in Council 9 

Froude's History of England 1 

Short Studies on Great Subjects 8 



<Janot's Elementary Physics 11 

Gilbert and Churchill's Dolomite Moun- 
tains 22 

"Gill's Papal Drama 3 

Gilly's Shipwrecks of the Navy 22 

Goodeve's Elements of Mechanism 17 

Gorle's Questions on Browne's Exposition 

of the 39 Articles 18 

Gould's Silver Store 10 

Grant's Ethics of Aristotle 5 

Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson .... 8 

Gray's Anatomy 14 

Greene's Corals and Sea Jellies 12 

Sponges and Animalculae 12 

Grove on Correlation of Physical Forces., li 

Gwilt's Encyclopaedia of Architecture .... 16 



Handbook of Angling, by Ephemera ...... 26 

Hare on Election of Representatives 6 

Harley and Brown's Histological Demon- 
strations 15 

Hartwig's Harmonies of Nature 12 

Pol ar World 12 

Sea and its Living Wonders.... 12 

Tropical World 12 

Haughto.v's Manual of Geology 11 

Hawk er's Instructions to Young Sportsmen 26 

HEARN'sPlutology 1 

on English Government 1 

Helps's Spanish Conquest in America 2 

Henderson's Folk-Lore of the Northern 

Counties ; 10 

Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy 10 

Hewitt on Diseases of Women 14 

Hodgson's Time and Space 9 

Holmes's System of Surgery 14 

Surgical Diseases of Infancy .... 14 

Hooker and Walker-Arnott's Britisn 

Flora 13 

Hopkins's Hawaii ll 

Horne's Introduction to the Scriptures .... 19 

_.=——— Compendium of ditto 19 



Horsley's Manual of Poisons 15 

Hoskyns's Occasional Essays 9 

How we Spent the Summer 22 

Howard's Gymnastic Exercises 15 

Howitt's Australian Discovery 22 

Rural Life of England 23 

Visits to Remarkable Places 23 

Hudson's Executor's Guide 28 

Hughes's (W.) Manual of Geography 10 

Hullah's Collection of Sacred Music 16 

Lectures on Modern Music 15 

Transition Musical Lectures .... 15 

Humphreys' Sentiments of Shakspeare .... 16 

Hdtton's Studies in Parliament 8 

Ingelow's Poems 25 

Story of Doom 25 

Jameson's Legends of the Saints and Mar- 
tyrs 16 

Legends of the Madonna 16 

Legends of the Monastic Orders 16 

Jameson and Eastlake's History of Our 

Lord 16 

Jenner's Holy Child 25 

Johns ion's Gazetteer, or Geographical Dic- 
tionary 10 

Jordan's Vis Inertias in the Ocean 10 

Kalisch's Commentary on the Bible 7 

Hebrew Grammar 7 

Keith on Fulfilment of Prophecy 18 

Destiny of the World 18 

Ke.ler's Lake Dwellings of Switzerland.. 12 

Kesteven's Domestic Medicine 15 

Ktrby and Spence's Entomology 13 

Knight's Arch of Titus 22 

Lady's Tour Round Monte Rosa 22 

Landon's (L. E. L.) Poetical Works 25 

Latham's English Dictionary 7 

River Plate 10 

Lawrence on Rocks 11 

Leck y's History of Rationalism 3 

Leak's Homeward Ride 25 

Leisure Hours in Town 8 

Lessons of Middle Age 8 

Lewes' History of Philosophy 3 

Letters of Distinguished Musicians 4 

LiDDELLand Scott's Greek-English Lexicon 7 

■■ Abridged ditto 7 

Life of Man Symbolised 16 

Ltndley and Moore's Treasury of Botany 13 
Longman's Lectures on the History of Eng- 
land 2 

Loudon's Agriculture 18 

Cottage, Farm,Villa Architecture 18 

— Gardening 18 

Plants , 13 

Trees and Shrubs , -13 

Lowndes's Engineer's Handbook 17 

Lyra Domestica , 21 

Eucharistica 21 

Germanica 16, 21 

Messianica 21 

Mystica 21 

Sacra , 21 

Macaulay's (Lord") Essays 3 

History of England 1 

Lays of Ancient Rome. 24 

Miscellaneous Writings 8 

Speeches 6 



NEW WORKS published by LONGMANS and CO. 



31 



Maca play's (Lord) Works ] 

Macfarre.v's Lectures on Harmony 15 

Macxeod's Elements of Political Economy 6 

Dictionary of Political Economy 6 

Elements of Banking 27 

Theorv and Practice of Banking 27 

McCuixoch's Dictionary of Commerce 27 

Geographical Dictionary 1 

Maguire's Irish in America 23 

Life of Father Mathew 4 

Rome and its Rulers 4 

Malleson's French in India 3 

Man nikg on Holy Ghost 20 

's England and Christendom 20 

Marshall's Physiology 14 

Marshm an 's Life of Havelock 5 

History of India 3 

Martineau's Endeavours after the Chris- 
tian Life 21 

Massey's History of England 2 

(G.) on Shakspeare's Sonnets 25 

Masstnoberd's History of th e Reformation. . 4 

Madnder's Biographical Treasury 5 

Geographical Treasury 11 

Historical Treasury 3 

Scientific and Literary Treasury 13 

Treasury of Knowledge 28 

Treasury of Natural History .. 13 

Maury's Phvsical Geography 10 

May's Constitutional History of England.. 2 

Melville's Digby Grand 24 

General Bounce 24 

Gladiators 24 

Good for Nothing 24 

Holmby House 24 

Interpreter 24 

Kate Coventry 24 

Queen's Maries 24 

Mendelssohn's Letters 4 

Meriv ale's (ID Historical Studies 2 

(C.) Fall of the Roman Republic 3 

Romans under the Empire 3 

Miles on Horse's Foot and Horseshoeing... 26 

on Horses' Teeth and Stables 26 

Mill on Liberty 6 

on Representative Government 6 

on Utilitarianism 6 

Mill's Dissertations and Discussions 6 

r~ Political Economy 6 

System of Logic 6 

Hamilton's Philosophy 6 

St. Andrews' Inaugural Address .. 6 

Miller's Elements of Chemistry 14 

Mitchell's Manual of Assaying 18 

Monsell's Beatitudes 21 

His P: esence— not his Memory. . 21 

* Spiritual Songs ' 21 

Montgomery on Presrnancy i * 

Moore's Irish Melodies «. 24 

Lalla Rookh 24 

Poetical Works 24 

(Dr. G.) First Man 12 

Morell's Elements of Psychology 9 

Mental Philosophy 9 

Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History 21 

Mozart's Letters 4 

M'oller's (Max) Chips from a German 

Workshop 9 

■ Lectures on the Science of 

Language 7 

(K. CO Literature of Ancient 

Greece 2 

Murchtson on Continued Fever? 14 

Mure's Language and Literature of Greece 2 



New Testament, illustrated with Wood En- 
gravings from the Old Masters 16 

Newman's History of Ms Religious Opinions 4 



Ntcholas's Pedigree of the English People 9 

Nichols' Handbook to the British Museum 28 

Ntohtinoale's Notes on Hospitals 28 

Njlsson's Scandinavia 12 

Odlino's Animal Chemistry 14 

Course of Practical Chemistry .... 14 

Manual of Chemistry 14 

Original Designs for Wood Carving 17 

Owen's Lectures on the Invertebrate Ani- 
mals 12 

Comparative Anatomy and Physio- 
logy of Vertebrate Animals 12 

Oxenham on Atonement 20 

Pacre's Guide to the Pyrenees 22 

Paget's Lectures on Surgical Pathology.'.. 14 

Pereir a's Manual of Materia Medica 22 

Perkins's Tuscan Sculptors 17 

Phillips's Guide to Geology 11 

Pictures in Tyrol , 22 

Piesse's Art of Perfumery 18 

Chemical, Natural, and Physical 

Magic 18 

Pike's English and their Origin 9 

Pitt on Brewing 28 

Playtime with the Poets 25 

Plowden's Travels in Abyssinia 22 

Pratt's Law of Building Societies ........ 28 

Prescott's Scripture Difficulties 19 

Proctor's Saturn 10 

Handbook of the Stars 10 

Pycroft's Course of English Reading 7 

CricketField 26 

Raikes's Englishman in India 23 

Reade's Poetical Works 25 

Recreations of a Countrv Parson 8 

REiLY'sMapof Mont Blanc 22 

Reimann on Aniline 15 

Reynolds's Alice Rushton . . . . = 25 

Rivers's Rose Amateur's Guide 13 

Rogers's Correspondence of Greyson 9 

Eclipse of Faith 9< 

Defence of ditto 9< 

Essays from the Edinburgh Review 9 

Reason and Faith 9 

Rooet's Thesaurus of English Words and 

Phrases 7 

Ronalds's Fly-Fisher's Entomology 26 

Rowton's Debater 7 

Rudd's Aristophanes 25' 

Russell on Government and Constitution. . 1 

Sandars's Justinian's Institutes 5 

Schubert's Life, translated by Coleridge.. 5 

Scott's Lectures on the Fine Arts 15 

Seebohm's Oxford Reformers of 1498 2 

Sewell's After Life 23 

Amy Herbert 23 

CleveHall 23 

Earl's Daughter 23 

Examination for Confirmation ... 20 

Experience of Life 23 

Gertrude 23 

Glimpse of the World 23 

— History of the Early Church 3 

Ivors 23 

Journal of a Home Life 23 

Katharine Ashton 23 

Laneton Parsonage 23 

Margaret Percival 23 

Passing Thoughts on Religion .... 20 

Preparation for Communion 20 



32 



NEW WORKS published by LONGMANS and CO. 



Sewell's Principles of Education 20 

— Readings for Confirmation 20 

Readings for Lent 20 

Tales and Stories 23 

Ursula 23 

Shaw's "Work on Wine .„ 28 

Shepherd's Iceland ." 21 

Shipley's Church and the World 19 

TractsfortheDay 20 

Short Whist 28 

Short's Church History 3 

Smith's (Southwood) Philosophy of Health 28 

(J.) Paul's Voyage and Shipwreck. . 18 

(GO King David 1;) 

_ Wesleyan Methodism 4 

(Sydney) Miscellaneous Works .... 8 

Moral Philosophy 8 

Wit and Wisdom 9 

Smith on Cavalry Drill and Manoeuvres .... 26 

Southey's (Doctor) 7 

Poetical Works 24 

• Springdale Abbey 23 

Stanley's History of British Birds 12 

Stebbing's Analysis of Mill's Logic 6 

Stephen's Essays in Ecclesiastical Bio- 
graphy 5 

Lectures on History of France . . 2 

Stirling's Secret of Hegel 9 

Stonehenge on the Dog 26 

on the Greyhound 27 

Story of Mairwara 23 

Sunday Afternoons at the Parish Church of 

a Scottish University City (Aberdeen) .... 8 



Taylor's (Jeremy) Works, edited by Eden 21 
— (E0 Selections from some Contem- 
porary Poets 25 

Tennent's Ceylon 13 

Wild Elephant 13 

Thirlw all's History of Greece 2 

Thomson's (Archbishop) Laws of Thought 6 

(A. TO Conspectus 15 

Timbs's Curiosities of London 23 

Todd (A.) on Parliamentary Government. . 1 
Todd and Bowman's Anatomy and Phy- 
siology of Man. , . . . . 15 

Trollope's Barchester Towers 23 

Warden 23 

Twiss's Law of Nations 27 



Tyndall's Lectures on Heat... 
Sound . 



Memoir of Faraday . 



Ure's Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, 
and Mines 



Van Der Hoeven's Handbook of Zoology . . 1 
Vaughan's (RO Revolutions in English 

History 

Way toRest 1 

Walker on the Rifle 2 I 

Ward's Workmen and Wages 

Watson's Principles and Practice of Physic 1 I 

Watts's Dictionary of Chemistry 1 P 

Webb's Objects for Common Telescopes.... 1 j 
Webster & Wilkinson's Greek Testament 1' 

Weld's Florence 2 

Wellington's Life, by the Rev G. R. 

Gleig 

Wells on Dew 1 1 

Wendt's Papers on Maritime Law 

West on Children's Diseases 

Whately's English Synonymes 

Logic 

Rhetoric 

Life an d Correspondence , 

Whately on the Truth of Christianity. . . 

Religious Worship 

Whist, what to lead, by Cam „ 

White and Riddle's Latin-English Dic- 
tionaries „ 

Winslow on Light ] 

Wood's Bible Animals , 

Homes without Hands 

Wright's Homer's Iliad ! 

Yonge's English-Greek Lexicon 

Abridged ditto 

Horace 

Young's Nautical Dictionary 

Yodatt on the Dog M 

onthe Horse 



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